Ventusky Expands Forecast Accuracy with the HARMONIE Weather Model

Today, we have added a new weather model to Ventusky: HARMONIE, operated by the Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) in collaboration with several countries, including Denmark, Ireland and Iceland. This model provides weather forecasts for key regions. On Ventusky, you can find it under the name HARMONIE EU for Western and Central Europe and ... More >>

Ventusky
No Thunderstorms layer available for Europe? It is available for the Caribbean.

Bary
It is not currently available for Europe. KNMI would have to add it to the data package. We'll see if they add it. Would certainly be useful.

Ventusky
Thanks a lot for the new model

Unfortunately, it doesn’t fully cover southern Italy. But sometimes we have to make do

Michele7
Thank you

In the far south of Europe, the old COSMO model is still frequently used, but according to our internal tests, it is not good. ICON-EU has always performed better for us, even at a lower resolution. Because of this, we are not considering adding an Italian / COSMO model https://my.ventusky.com/discussion/topic-added-cos...

Moreover, COSMO is outdated and is often replaced by other models: https://www.cosmo-model.org/content/support/icon/d... Consortium member states are expected to have replaced COSMO with ICON model in 2022. (but not in Italy )

In the last years DWD developed a limited area mode for ICON (ICON-LAM), which will replace all applications of the COSMO-Model in the near future. During the development it was soon clear that this limited-area mode of ICON outperforms the COSMO-Model in forecast quality and also in computational efficiency. At the same time, further development of the COSMO-Model has been reduced to a lower level only needed for operational production.

On the contrary, the HARMONIE model performs well in the initial tests. After all, northern countries in Europe are among the best in weather modeling.

Thank you, that is great.

Regarding COSMO model - also the Swiss no longer use COSMO and have ICON: https://www.meteoswiss.admin.ch/about-us/research-...

For the Alps the great option is ICON-DE. I use it often and it is excellent.

Ventusky
I understand, thanks for the information

Ventusky
An other question. Are you going to implement it soon in your app?

Michele7
Yes, it will take 1-3 weeks.