The RAINA team convened for its first in-person meeting at the Institute of Computer Science of the University of Bonn. The meeting provided an opportunity for the team members to build connections, review project goals and outline the project’s timeline.
Key discussions focused on the Foundation Model development, methods to enhance its capabilities to forecast extreme events and approaches for high-resolved short-range forecasts of wind and precipitation.
The future model development will be pursued in liaison with the WeatherGenerator project, an ambitious EU Horizon project to develop a highly flexible Foundation Model of the Earth system. RAINA will complement research and development of the WeatherGenerator by incorporating the new German reanalysis ICON-DREAM and making novel use of observational datasets. RAINA is unique in its search for innovative methods to enhance the forecasting of extreme events at very high resolution.
Until the first prototype of the new Foundation Model will become available (expected for spring 2025), a proof-of-concept application to fuse forecasting and statistical downscaling will be developed based on the AtmoRep Foundation Model.
The next project meeting is planned for 4th March 2025 at DWD in Offenbach.
