The NMSs of Lithuania and Romania become full Members of EUMETNET

The NMSs of Lithuania and Romania become full Members of EUMETNET

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Two new National Met Services will join EUMETNET as full Members from 1st January 2024. The NMSs of Lithuania and Romania, both Cooperating Members of EUMETNET for several years, officially requested full membership from 1st January. These two new Members will bring the number of full Members of EUMETNET to 33.

The delegation from NMAR (NMS of Romania) was present at the 31st Assembly meeting in Reading and signed the amendment Agreement with the Assembly Chair, Roar Skalin and the Executive Director, Klemen Bergant.

Signature of amended EUMETNET Agreement

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The 31 Members of EUMETNET signed the amendment to the EUMETNET Agreement that will come into force on 1st January 2024. EUMETNET, which was previously an economic interest grouping (GIE – Groupement d’Intérêt Economique), will become a general partnership (SNC – Société en Nom Collectif).

The amendment to the Agreement was signed at the Assembly meeting that took place at ECMWF Headquarters in Reading, UK.

This Agreement provides the basis for cooperation between the European NMSs for the next 10 years.

The Chair of the Assembly, Roar Skalin and Klemen Bergant, the Executive Director, sign the Agreement.

Approval of new 5-year Programme phase

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At its 31st Assembly meeting in Reading, EUMETNET Assembly Members approved the new five-year Programme phase that will last until 2028, extending all the current Programmes and their Modules.

In addition two new Programmes and Modules were approved, the new Programme on Artificial Intelligence for Weather, Climate and Environmental Applications, as well as a new activity within the Aviation Support Programme producing Cross-Boder Convention Forecasts for EUROCONTROL Network Manager and other users.

New Chair and Vice-Chair of EUMETNET Assembly

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EUMETNET’s Spring Assembly meeting, held in Reykjavik,  was chaired for the first time by Dr Roar Skålin, Director of the Norwegian Meteorological Service, MET Norway, who has been elected as the new Chair of EUMETNET’s Assembly of Members.

Dr Skålin replaces Dr Peter Binder from MeteoSwiss, who stepped down as Chair following his retirement.

Dr Martin Benko from the Slovakian Meterological Service, SHMU, was elected as Vice-Chair.

Both Dr Skålin and Dr Benko will serve initial two-year terms.

One Health: Need for an EU One Health-in-all-policies approach: Addressing the Asthma and Allergy pandemic

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On last Tuesday 4 July, a round table was held in European Parliament in Brussels entitled “One Health: Need for an EU One Health-in-all-policies approach: Addressing the Asthma and Allergy pandemic “.
This event, organised under the lead of Ingrida Šaulienė and hosted by the MEP Juozas Olekas, was a great opportunity to promote the inclusion of information on pollen concentrations in European regulations.
To watch or re-watch this exciting event, you can download the recording via the link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LOQHEyio6Ku3CLM46QZAomDEcXFnbyVX/view?usp=drive_link

Also, some photos of the event are available via: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1LTTCjfivK_xdDpf8TiCiFqQMR9smDm5q?usp=drive_link

The event culminated in a Joint Statement which you can find below

Joint Statement – AutoPollen

RODEO Project Launch

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RODEO Project Launch – making meteorological high-value datasets available for all

 

The Provision of Open Access to Public Meteorological Data and Development of Shared Federated Data Infrastructure for the Development of Information Products and Services (RODEO) Project has now been officially launched.

 

In 2019, the European Commission issued a revised directive on open data (1024/2019/EU) which aims to harmonize and enhance regulation related to the opening of public sector data reserves. The Implementing Regulation of the Directive defines High Value Datasets (HVD), (EU) 2023/138, and the technical requirements for each of the data categories. One of which concerns meteorological data.

The RODEO project responds to the requirements of the HVD Implementing Regulation by making meteorological High Value Datasets easily available and bringing new data to businesses, public administrations and citizens.

The regulation defines requirements for surface weather observations, climate time series, warnings, weather radar data, and Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) data. Furthermore, the regulation specifies they shall be available under an open license, in a machine-readable format using Application Programming Interfaces (API) and bulk downloadable. These datasets will be free of charge.

The project is co-funded by the Digital Europe Programme (DIGITAL) and by the network of 31 European National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (EUMETNET). The project partners consist of 11 European meteorological institutions (listed below), the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) and EUMETNET..

The project strengthens the capacity of the European meteorological data providers to comply with the HVD Implementing Regulation by:

  • Developing a user interface
  • Developing APIs for accessing weather observation data, climate data, weather radar data, warnings, and AI datasets
  • Developing a data catalogue for making data discoverable
  • Engaging with the data owners and user communities
  • Supporting the deployment of national data portals and APIs
  • Making HVDs available from the project partners

During the three-year RODEO project, the project partners will design and implement harmonised technical solutions supporting the European meteorological institutions to meet the HVD requirements. This will increase the usability of public sector meteorological data and boost entrepreneurship, improve and develop digital products and services and support climate research.

Most importantly, better data availability leads to better weather warnings, forecasts, and services to the public and weather-critical industries, and contributes to the safe and efficient functioning of society with multiple benefits across the European economy, industry, and society.

 

 

The Project Partners are:

Ilmatieteen laitos, Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI)

Danmarks Meteorologiske Institut, Danish Meteorological Institute (DMI)

European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF)

Orszagos Meteorologiai Szolgalat, Hungarian Meteorological Service (OMSZ)

Bundesanstalt für Geologie, Geophysik, Klimatologie und Meteorologie, GeoSphere Austria

Koninklijk Nederlands Meteorologisch Institutt, Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI)

Latvijas Vides, Geologijas un Meteorologijas Centrs Sia, Latvian Environment, Geology and Meteorology Centre (LVGMC)

EUMETNET Groupement D’Interet Economique, EUMETNET

Meteorologisk Institutt, Norwegian Meteorological Institute (Met Norway)

Administratia Nationala De Meteorologie R.A., National Administration of Meteorology of Romania (ANM)

Vedurstofa Islands, Icelandic Meteorological Office (IMO)

Instytut Meteorologii i Gospodarki Wodnej – Państwowy Instytut Badawczy, Institute of Meteorology and Water Management – National Research Institute of Poland (IMGW-PIB)

Institut Royal Meteorologique de Belgique, NSTITUT ROYAL METEOROLOGIQUE DE Belgique, Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium (IRM)

 

 

Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on Machine Learning in Weather & Climate

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Launch of a new Massive Open Online Course on Machine Learning in Weather and Climate

Registrations are now open for a new Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on Machine Learning in Weather and Climate! The MOOC will be launched in January 2023 by European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) in partnership with the International Foundation on Big Data and Artificial Intelligence for Human Development (IFAB).

 

The objective is to train a wider community on the impact and use of machine learning in numerical weather and climate predictions. It will bring together experts throughout Member and Co-operating States and beyond to provide a shared vision across the communities of Earth system sciences, high-performance computing and machine learning.

 

What is the MOOC and who is it for?

 

It is a fully online free training course, accessible to a global audience. In order to maximise inclusivity, the MOOC is distributed in time with a three-tiered approach. Learners may choose to follow one or more tiers. Within each tier, the programme is modular. Participants may select one or more modules within a particular topic subset, according to their interests.

 

The first tier is an introduction to machine learning in weather and climate. It is aimed at anyone interested in the topic, be they academics, from operational services, policy makers or the general public. Only a basic knowledge of weather and climate science, statistics and computing is assumed of learners.

 

Tier two takes a deeper look at the concepts of machine learning, and tier three demonstrates practical machine learning applications in weather and climate. These two tiers are more hands-on and include coding assignments, in which learners have the opportunity to apply machine learning to real-world problems. Tiers two and three are therefore more suited to technical data users from academia or industry across different sectors.

 

To allow for self-paced learning, the MOOC runs over ten weeks, with around three to four hours of study per week, for a total of 36 hours of training. The end of the MOOC coincides with the application phase of ECMWF’s Summer of Weather Code (ESoWC), in which learners will be encouraged to submit proposals for coding projects with ECMWF mentoring and the chance to win a cash stipend.

 

About the training

 

The MOOC mixes interactive e‑learning with webinars. Learning will be consolidated through a wide variety of activities, from videos and commuter friendly podcasts to discussion forums and e‑learning modules. Guided by a host of domain specialists from around the world, learners will be able to

explore the subject from different angles. The webinars, for instance, are perfect occasions to interact with leading experts from the field. The acquired knowledge will then be honed in practical exercises. Using interactive Jupyter notebooks, learners will have the possibility of gaining hands-on practical experience with machine learning algorithms.

 

Throughout their whole learning journey, participants will be accompanied by a dedicated science communicator, who will break down the technical content into plain language whenever needed. Each completed tier will be rewarded with a certificate of completion. Those who

complete all three tiers shall receive particular recognition with a more comprehensive certificate. At the end of the live run, the material will continue to be freely accessible from the ECMWF website.

 

Register now for the MOOC at https://www.ecmwf.int/mlwc-mooc

 

E-SurfMar & the Saint Malo “Route du Rhum”

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28th & 29th October – Discussion and Test with IMOCA racing boats for next year’s OceanRace

The EUMETNET E-SurfMar Programme collaborates with EUMETSAT, CLS and OceanOPS to deploy our drifting buoys.

The new phase of the programme requires us to deploy buoys in all oceans. We must therefore have at our disposal a panel of ships allowing us to optimize our deployments. With the help of OceanOPS we have established a strong link with the world of racing sailing, in particular with the Imoca class and more recently with the Ocean Race which will leave in January for a crewed round the world race.

To better understand the constraints of these racing boats, we went to Saint Malo for the “Route du Rhum”. This allowed us to meet the technical teams of ships that will deploy our buoys during the Ocean Race. Several limiting factors have been addressed to enable future deployments. We had with us a buoy from the programme allowing the crews to better understand our problems. We were also able to understand their questions. The Ocean Race, which is organizing its round-the-world trip, will make reinforced bags to allow our buoys to be moved safely during the race without damaging the ship, which is entirely made of carbon.

So we did tests on the ships. We were also able to communicate about our activities within the programme and explain to this community the importance of these buoys for weather forecasts.

Geneva DBCP (Data Buoy Cooperation Panel) 38

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Within the framework of the DBCP, Olivier Desprez de Gésincourt, the manager of E-SurfMar and Christophe Guillerm, the manager of the work package data buoys,  went to Geneva for the DBCP 38 meeting (Data Buoy Cooperation Panel) that took place from 31st October to 4th November.

The purpose of this meeting was to meet our different partners face-to-face for the first time in person since COVID-19 and also to present the new Programme Management Team.

The Programme Manager presented his work and, in addition, work shops were organized on the following themes :

-Data management

-Anchored buoys

-Wave measurements

-Capacity building

-Environmental management

-Vandalism and Awareness

-GDAC

 

For the new E-SurfMar management team, this was a very relevant meeting to discuss and meet with colleagues, especially those at NOAA where an agreement is in place to be part of the GDP UPgrade programme.

We met Marc Lucas from CLS who manages the Trusted programme as part of WMO collegues from OceanOPS.

Finally, it was an essential opportunity for us to share and present our programme.

44th EWGLAM & 29th SRNWP workshop

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The 44th European Working Group on Limited-Area Modelling (EWGLAM) Meeting and the 29th Short Range NWP (SRNWP) Meeting were successfully organized between 26-29 September in Brussels, Belgium, with around 80 in-situ and 60 online participants and several invited speakers. The special topic this year was “Opportunities and challenges in hectometric NWP”. It was concluded that many hectometric NWP applications nowadays are focusing on urban environment. The most important challenges related to these models are adequate external parameters (e.g. land use database on the order of 10 m) and suitable physical parameterizations (e.g. 3D turbulence). A special session was also organized about the future evolution of High Performance Computing.

Presentations are available at the meeting’s website: http://srnwp.met.hu/Annual_Meetings/2022/index.html