Forum Discussion

Ensuring that the shared ECMWF data is received, well understood, and utilized would be beneficial. While ECMWF may believe they have fulfilled all requirements, the countries we support were still awaiting guidance from them to begin using the data . This may be the case in other countries.
In addition to being aware that there may be a communication barrier due to cultural differences, ECMWF can think about designating a specific contact person that the met offices can get in touch with and ask directly if they need assistance.  Nonetheless, some key issues specific to SOFF identified during MET Norway capacity building with DCCMS (Malawi) regarding the use of the SOFF-dedicated ECMWF dataset.
- Precipitation data which is crucial is lacking
- It would be helpful with guidelines including:

• stating file format (grib)
• links to documentation on how to handle grib data by ECMWF
• stating what the file names mean, i.e. connect file names with the information on the soff page that explains which files contain surface data, which contains model level, etc.
• Also state what the numbers in the file names mean. 
• stating that there is one time step per file etc