† The contribution of C. Smith was written in the course of his employment at the Met Office, UK and is published with the permission of the controller of HMSO and the Queen's Printer for Scottland.Drawing from the results of theoretical studies about the behaviour of constantcoefficients semi-implicit schemes, the dynamical kernel of the Aladin-NH spectral limited-area numerical weather prediction (NWP) model has been modified in order to allow for a stable and efficient integration of the fully elastic Euler equations. The resulting dynamical kernel offers the possibility to use semi-Lagrangian transport schemes together with two-time-level discretizations at kilometric scales for NWP purposes. The main characteristics of the adiabatic part of the model formulation and the space and time discretization are described in this article. In order to illustrate the dependence of the results on adjustable parameters of the dynamical kernel, some real-case dynamical-adaptation forecasts performed with a basic physical parameterization package are presented. The results obtained with this model in real-case experiments fully confirm the conclusions drawn in previous numerical analysis studies. The good quality of the results is found to be compatible with a routine exploitation in a NWP framework. The Aladin-NH dynamical kernel has been used in the operational NWP 'AROME' model since December 2008 at the kilometric scale, with an appropriate physical parameterization package and data assimilation system.

Abstract. The ALADIN System is a numerical weather prediction (NWP) system developed by the international AL-ADIN consortium for operational weather forecasting and research purposes. It is based on a code that is shared with the global model IFS of the ECMWF and the ARPEGE model of Météo-France. Today, this system can be used to provide a multitude of high-resolution limited-area model (LAM) configurations. A few configurations are thoroughly validated and prepared to be used for the operational weather forecasting in the 16 partner institutes of this consortium. These configurations are called the ALADIN canonical model configurations (CMCs). There are currently three CMCs: the AL-ADIN baseline CMC, the AROME CMC and the ALARO CMC. Other configurations are possible for research, such as process studies and climate simulations.The purpose of this paper is (i) to define the ALADIN System in relation to the global counterparts IFS and ARPEGE, (ii) to explain the notion of the CMCs, (iii) to document their most recent versions, and (iv) to illustrate the process of the validation and the porting of these configurations to the operational forecast suites of the partner institutes of the AL-ADIN consortium. This paper is restricted to the forecast model only; data assimilation techniques and postprocessing techniques are part of the ALADIN System but they are not discussed here.

Spectral integration is the most time consuming part of solar radiative transfer codes used in numerical weather prediction. Routinely used approaches usually incline to one of two extremes – expensive and very accurate correlated k‐distribution method made affordable by doing radiative transfer calculations with reduced temporal and/or spatial resolution, or cheaper but less accurate broadband approach affordable at every grid‐point and time‐step. Both approaches have their pros and cons, but hybrid solutions do not seem very promising. The presented work improves accuracy of full spectrum broadband approach by parameterizing secondary saturation of gaseous absorption, optical saturation of Rayleigh scattering and of cloud absorption as well as non‐random gas‐cloud spectral overlap. In order to isolate the problem of spectral integration from other approximations, one builds a narrowband reference using the same delta‐two stream framework as the broadband scheme. Using this reference reveals the surprising fact that saturation effect of cloud absorption for one single layer and for the whole solar spectrum can be parameterized in a rather compact way, with one simple formula for liquid clouds and one for ice clouds. One then introduces the concept of effective cloud optical depth, which extends the applicability of parameterized cloud optical saturation to multi‐layer cases, accommodating also effects of gas‐cloud spectral overlap in the near‐infrared. A scheme with all the above parameterizations indeed pushes accuracy limits of broadband approach to the level where a single shortwave interval can be used. This opens the possibility to reduce costs by using selective intermittency, where slowly evolving gaseous transmissions are updated on the timescale of hours, while quickly varying cloud optical properties are recomputed at every model time‐step. In a companion article it will be demonstrated that the above core strategy is applicable also to thermal radiative transfer, with perhaps even better cost effectiveness there.

Abstract. The ALADIN System is a numerical weather prediction system (NWP) developed by the international ALADIN consortium for operational weather forecasting and research purposes. It is based on a code that is shared with the global model IFS of the ECMWF and the ARPEGE model of Météo-France. Today, this system can be used to provide a multitude of high-resolution limited-area model (LAM) configurations. A few configurations are thoroughly validated and prepared to be used for the operational weather forecasting in the 16 Partner Institutes of this consortium. These configurations are called the ALADIN Canonical Model Configurations (CMCs). There are currently three CMCs: the ALADIN baseline-CMC, the AROME CMC and the ALARO CMC. Other configurations are possible for research, such as process studies and climate simulations. The purpose of this paper is (i) to define the ALADIN System in relation to the global counterparts IFS and ARPEGE, (ii) to explain the notion of the CMCs and to document their most recent versions, and (iii) to illustrate the process of the validation and the porting of these configurations to the operational forecast suites of the Partner Institutes of the ALADIN consortium. This paper is restricted to the forecast model only; data assimilation techniques and postprocessing techniques are part of the ALADIN System but they are not discussed here.

Abstract. The direct shortwave radiative effect of aerosols under clear-sky conditions in the Aire Limitee Adaptation dynamique Developpement InterNational -High Resolution Limited Area Model (ALADIN-HIRLAM) numerical weather prediction system was investigated using three shortwave radiation schemes in diagnostic single-column experiments: the Integrated Forecast System (IFS), acraneb2 and the hlradia radiation schemes. The multi-band IFS scheme was formerly used operationally by the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) whereas hlradia and acraneb2 are broadband schemes. The former is a new version of the HIRLAM radiation scheme while acraneb2 is the radiation scheme in the ALARO-1 physics package.The aim was to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the numerical weather prediction (NWP) system regarding aerosols and to prepare it for use of real-time aerosol information. The experiments were run with particular focus on the August 2010 Russian wildfire case. Each of the three radiation schemes accurately (within ±4 % at midday) simulates the direct shortwave aerosol effect when observed aerosol optical properties are used. When the aerosols were excluded from the simulations, errors of more than +15 % in global shortwave irradiance were found at midday, with the error reduced to +10 % when standard climatological aerosols were used. An error of −11 % was seen at midday if only observed aerosol optical depths at 550 nm, and not observation-based spectral dependence of aerosol optical depth, single scattering albedos and asymmetry factors, were included in the simulations. This demonstrates the importance of using the correct aerosol optical properties. The dependency of the direct radiative effect of aerosols on relative humidity was tested and shown to be within ±6 % in this case. By modifying the assumptions about the shape of the IFS climatological vertical aerosol profile, the inherent uncertainties associated with assuming fixed vertical profiles were investigated. The shortwave heating rates in the boundary layer changed by up to a factor of 2 in response to the aerosol vertical distribution without changing the total aerosol optical depth. Finally, we tested the radiative transfer approximations used in the three radiation schemes for typical aerosol optical properties compared to the accurate DIS-ORT model. These approximations are found to be accurate to within ±13 % even for large aerosol loads.

The main obstacle to efficient calculation of longwave radiative transfer is the existence of multiple radiative sources, each with its own emission spectrum. The work presented here overcomes this problem by combining the full spectrum broadband approach with the net exchanged rate decomposition. The idea is worked out to suit the needs of numerical weather prediction, where the most costly contribution representing the sum of internal exchanges is interpolated between cheap minimum and maximum estimates, while exchange with the surface and dominant cooling to space contributions are calculated accurately. The broad‐band approach must address the additional problems related to spectral integration and many ideas developed previously for the solar spectrum are reused. Specific issues appear, the dependence of broadband gaseous transmissions on the temperature of the emitting body being the most important one. The thermal spectrum also brings some simplifications—aerosols, clouds and the Earth's surface can safely be treated as grey bodies. The optical saturation of gaseous absorption remains the main complication and non‐random spectral overlaps between gases become much more significant than in the solar spectrum. The broadband character of the proposed scheme enables the use of an unreduced spatial resolution with an intermittent update of gaseous transmissions and interpolation weights, thus ensuring a full response of longwave radiation to rapidly varying cloudiness and temperature fields. This is in contrast to the mainstream strategy, where very accurate and expensive radiative transfer calculations are performed infrequently, often with reduced spatial resolution. The approach proposed here provides a much better balance between errors coming from the radiation scheme itself and from the intermittency strategy. The key achievement, ensuring a good scalability of the scheme, is a computational cost essentially linear in the number of layers, with straightforward inclusion of scattering as an additional bonus.

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This paper describes 27 years of scientific and operational achievement of Regional Cooperation for Limited Area Modelling in Central Europe (RC LACE), which is supported by the national (hydro-) meteorological services of Austria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia. The principal objectives of RC LACE are to 1) develop and operate the state-of-the-art limited-area model and data assimilation system in the member states and 2) conduct joint scientific and technical research to improve the quality of the forecasts. In the last 27 years, RC LACE has contributed to the limited-area Aire Limitée Adaptation Dynamique Développement International (ALADIN) system in the areas of preprocessing of observations, data assimilation, model dynamics, physical parameterizations, mesoscale and convection-permitting ensemble forecasting, and verification. It has developed strong collaborations with numerical weather prediction (NWP) consortia ALADIN, the High Resolution Limited Area Model (HIRLAM) group, and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). RC LACE member states exchange their national observations in real time and operate a common system that provides member states with the preprocessed observations for data assimilation and verification. RC LACE runs operationally a common mesoscale ensemble system, ALADIN–Limited Area Ensemble Forecasting (ALADIN-LAEF), over all of Europe for early warning of severe weather. RC LACE has established an extensive regional scientific and technical collaboration in the field of operational NWP for weather research, forecasting, and applications. Its 27 years of experience have demonstrated the value of regional cooperation among small- and medium-sized countries for success in the development of a modern forecasting system, knowledge transfer, and capacity building.