European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts

European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts
ManfredKloeppel · CC BY 3.0 · source
Name	European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts
Caption	ECMWF headquarters, Shinfield Park
Formation	1975
Headquarters	Shinfield Park, Reading, Berkshire
Region served	Europe
Membership	34 member and cooperating states
Leader title	Director General
Leader name	Florence Rabier

Contents

European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts is an independent intergovernmental organisation that provides global numerical weather prediction, seasonal forecasting, and climate monitoring services to its member and cooperating states. Founded through multilateral agreements involving Council of Europe, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, European Economic Community, and national meteorological services such as Météo-France, Deutscher Wetterdienst, and the UK Met Office, the Centre integrates research from institutions including Max Planck Society, CNRS, University of Reading, Imperial College London, and ETH Zurich. ECMWF’s outputs inform operational agencies like European Space Agency, World Meteorological Organization, NOAA, Japan Meteorological Agency, and Met Office as well as users across European Commission, NATO, International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and humanitarian organisations such as United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and Red Cross.

History

The Centre was established after negotiations involving representatives from United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, and other European states, following proposals influenced by research from Prandtl Institute, Royal Society, Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, and climatologists associated with IPCC contributors. Initial operational activities began in the late 1970s with cooperation agreements akin to those forged by European Space Agency and European Southern Observatory, and early computing arrangements resembled technology transfers seen in collaborations between CERN and national laboratories. ECMWF’s archive and reanalysis programmes developed alongside projects at Hadley Centre, Met Éireann, KNMI, and DWD, while institutional reforms mirrored governance changes at European Investment Bank and treaty adaptations such as those leading to the Maastricht Treaty.

ECMWF is governed by a Council composed of representatives from member and cooperating states including Sweden, Spain, Poland, Greece, Portugal, Turkey, Switzerland, and Norway, with oversight mechanisms comparable to boards at European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and European Central Bank. The Director General reports to the Council and interacts with scientific advisory committees resembling panels at Royal Society and Academia Europaea. ECMWF’s internal divisions collaborate with external national centres such as Servicio Meteorológico Nacional (Argentina), Australian Bureau of Meteorology, Environment and Climate Change Canada, and research institutes like Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory.

The Centre operates a suite of forecasting systems including deterministic and ensemble models analogous to systems developed at NCEP, GFS, ICON, IFS, and UM. Research themes draw on work from Pierre-Simon Laplace Institute, NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Met Office Hadley Centre, University of Oxford, and Princeton University on topics such as data assimilation, model physics, and coupled atmosphere–ocean dynamics. Operational products support stakeholders in European Commission Directorate-General for Climate Action, International Civil Aviation Organization, Eurocontrol, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, and emergency services coordinated with European External Action Service and ECHO.

ECMWF ingests observations from satellites and instruments provided by EUMETSAT, Copernicus Programme, Global Precipitation Measurement, Jason (satellite) missions, and ground networks operated by MeteoSwiss, AEMET, Danish Meteorological Institute, Icelandic Meteorological Office, Finnish Meteorological Institute, and Met Éireann. Data assimilation algorithms build on research from Fourier Institute, École Normale Supérieure, NOAA National Centers for Environmental Prediction, and Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales collaborations, incorporating radiosonde, radar, scatterometer, and GNSS observations from providers such as EUMETNET and European Space Agency. Reanalysis projects have been produced in partnership with Copernicus Climate Change Service, HadCRUT, PANGEA, and datasets commonly used by IPCC authors and climate research at University of Cambridge and Stockholm University.

High-performance computing at ECMWF has evolved through procurements from vendors like Cray Inc., Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM, Atos SE, and hardware initiatives similar to those at EuroHPC and PRACE. The Centre’s computing centre at Burlington House-style campuses moved to Shinfield Park with networking links to research networks such as GEANT, TERENA, JANET, and international peering with Internet2 and GÉANT. Software development follows practices used by OpenMP, MPI, Fortran Consortium, and collaborations with open-source projects hosted by GitHub and institutions including University of California, Berkeley and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Category:Meteorological organisations