European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts

Group on Earth Observations – GEO Week 2022

Statement of ECMWF

ECMWF contributes to GEO mainly via its participation in the EU Copernicus Programme. ECMWF manages the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S, https://climate.copernicus.eu/), the Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS, https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/), and runs flood and fire forecasting systems on behalf of the Emergency Management Service (CEMS, https://emergency.copernicus.eu/).  The output of these services, including environmental data, information and operational processing tools, are widely used by scientists, policy makers, governmental agencies and businesses in the GEO community.

C3S provides free and open data products about past, current and future climate worldwide with a community of more than 150,000 users. Among the most popular datasets are the global and regional atmosphere, land, ocean and sea-ice re-analysis, operational seasonal forecasts, CMIP6 climate projections and Essential Climate Variables products. The global re-analysis ERA5 has been cited more than 250 times in the latest IPCC Assessment Report. Alongside these products ECMWF invested significantly in the quality assurance, user support and training as well as in the development of public-facing products such climate bulletins and the state of the climate report. Sector specific applications demonstrate the added value for specific user communities, including indicators in support of the UN SDG Goals. C3S contributes also to the GDIS (global drought information system) GEO Initiative.

CAMS provides accurate analyses and forecasts detailing the composition of the atmosphere as well as linked emissions. CAMS is recognised as a trusted and quality assured data source for air pollutants including pollen, stratospheric ozone, aerosols and dust as well as wildfires at European and global scales with applications focused on policy makers in Europe, public health and solar energy sectors. Its products reach the wider society daily via global news channels, mobile phone apps and online platforms and they support EU and UN agencies. Furthermore, CAMS focuses on climate forcing and greenhouse gas surface flux inversions and is developing a European monitoring capacity for anthropogenic CO2 and CH4 emissions able to separate human impact from the natural carbon cycle. As such, CAMS contributes strongly to the UN Paris Agreement targets. CAMS contributes also to the UHCO (Urban Heritage Climate Observatory) GEO Initiative. Finally, CAMS has been entrusted by the European Commission to operate the Health Thematic Hub, a single-entry point for the data, products and information generated by all the Copernicus Services on health-related matters.

Complementing the wildfires monitoring, the European Forest Fire (EFFIS) and Global Wildfires Information Systems (GWIS) are currently run by ECMWF on behalf of CEMS to provide operational fire danger forecasts. Another important contribution to CEMS is the Global Flood Awareness System (GloFAS) aiming to increase preparedness against hydrological extremes and help emergency responses efforts across the world, also run by ECMWF as the hydrological forecast computation centre of CEMS. These activities are integrated into the GWIS and GEOGloWS (Global Water Sustainability) GEO Initiatives respectively.

These services make use of cloud-based technologies. The Climate and Atmosphere Data Store (CADS) and WEkEO offer a range of tools for the most efficient exploitation of data and information, by allowing users to develop applications and workflows on the cloud, without downloading large amounts of data and at the same time allowing for more transparency about the data processing applied. Most importantly, these tools are free to use by the GEO community. In parallel, ECMWF is developing the European Weather Cloud in collaboration with EUMETSAT primarily for use by their Member States. Use by National Meteorological Services of WMO Members will also be permitted.

ECMWF is one of the entrusted entities to implement Destination Earth as part of the European Commission’s Green Deal and Digital Strategy. By exploiting an unprecedented amount of data, innovative Earth system models and cutting-edge computing, Destination Earth will allow users to explore interactively the different components of the Earth system and natural and human-induced change by means of Digital Twins of the Earth. Users will be able to look at the past and present conditions and test and develop on-demand future scenarios. As well as being in charge of the Digital Twin Engine (the underlying common system approach allowing the creation and operation of Digital Twins), ECMWF is also developing a climate change adaptation Digital Twin and a weather-induced and geophysical extremes Digital Twin.

Finally, ECMWF continues its move towards an open data policy. ECMWF releases every day more than 700GB of medium-range weather forecasts in real-time and free of charge (https://www.ecmwf.int/en/forecasts/datasets/open-data), contributing to increasing the availability of global weather data to the GEO community and beyond. ECMWF will expand in 2023 such provision to include weather forecast fields in support of CAMS and C3S. In parallel, ECMWF will continue reducing the price of other chargeable data.

The participation in GEO allows ECMWF to keep a tight relationship with the environmental data user community. GEO brings the leverage the community needs to exchange information for the benefit of all.