Group on Earth Observations – GEO Global Forum 2025 & GEO-20 Plenary

ECMWF is looking forward to participating in the GEO Global Forum in Rome.

We want to use this opportunity to celebrate 20 years of GEO and 50 years of ECMWF, both happening this year.

Both our organisations have started from a concrete challenge that no single country or organisation could meet alone. For ECMWF, it was to address the critical and most difficult research problems in medium-range numerical weather prediction. We have grown into an organisation which provide Numerical Weather Prediction products from medium- to long-range both as research and an operational centre and advanced strongly into the developments of Earth observation services through Copernicus, Earth system modelling and recently also artificial intelligence.

ECMWF supports GEO’s ambitions on Earth Intelligence, integrating Earth observation data, socio-economic data, research and science, citizen observations, indigenous knowledge and other sources of information. In particular, ECMWF is a key partner in cooperation and coordination activities focused on stimulating user driven solutions through combining data sources with state-of-the-art modelling, predictions and scenario analysis.

ECMWF enables and supports many activities and developments in the GEO community via the European Union Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S, https://climate.copernicus.eu/), the Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS, https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/), and through the flood and fire forecasting systems run on behalf of JRC who operates the Emergency Management Service (CEMS, https://emergency.copernicus.eu/).

Through Destination Earth (DestinE, https://destine.ecmwf.int), ECMWF is developing a Digital Twin Engine operating two Digital Twins of the Earth: one on Weather-Induced Extremes and one on Climate Change Adaptation. As such, we capitalise on investments in Europe on Earth system modelling and on high performance computing and other digital infrastructure and tools, including AI/ML. DestinE is a programme of the European Commission and implemented by ECMWF, ESA and EUMETSAT.

Both Copernicus and DestinE activities at ECMWF are based on significant inputs from the wider European science and technology communities. Through this, ECMWF contributes to a #oneEuroGEO approach and EuroGEO’s objectives to combine, coordinate and cooperate Europe’s efforts.

Last but not least, ECMWF’s roadmap towards a fully open data policy on ECMWF numerical weather data by the end of 2025, extends its reach and will support even more those entities and countries which are most in need. This will come into play through our recently started engagement in the Africa-EU Space Partnership Programme (https://international-partnerships.ec.europa.eu/policies/programming/programmes/africa-eu-space-partnership-programme_en) in which ECMWF will implement the Space for Early Warning activities in partnership with the African Union Commission, African Regional Climate Centres, EUMETSAT and the wider European meteorological community and as such strongly contributed to UN’s Early Warning for All.

The participation in GEO allows ECMWF to keep a close relationship with the global Earth intelligence data user community and we are looking forward to many more years of fruitful collaboration. ECMWF wishes GEO a happy 20th anniversary!