More on TIGGE-LAM forecasts

This is a prequel to the previous post on Extracting point forecasts from TIGGE-LAM grib archives. How do you get access to the TIGGE-LAM data, and once you do have access, how do you know which data to download? The following is a short guide

1. Register as a user with ECMWF.   Visit https://www.ecmwf.int/, click on login, then on 'Register'.
2. Your registration may take a day or two to be approved.
3. Login, then visit the TIGGE-LAM data portal
4. Read the important notice on the MARS server's efficiency before attempting to download data: https://screenshots.firefox.com/1T73Hh78xsuAYpNw/apps.ecmwf.int
5. Assuming you just want a point forecast and not a whole ensemble, select 'prod' (production) as the version, select 'control forecast'
6. Select the time period (months and years) you are interested in.
7. Select the model from the TIGGE-LAM family whose output you wish to download. We used HIRLAM from the Danish Meteorological Institute because of its relatively high update frequency (every six hours).
8. Select the parameters of interest, e.g. 10 m u and v components of wind speed.
9. Submit the request
10. It may take several hours or even days for the request to be processed.
11. Check your job's progress on http://apps.ecmwf.int/webmars/joblist/

The ECMWF data portal also offers you a choice of output format. In the previous post on TIGGE-LAM I described how to deal with the default rotated lat/lon grid. However, other output format options are offered which may be more useful for your particular application.