The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) is an independent intergovernmental organisation supported by most of the nations of Europe. It is based at three sites: Shinfield Park, Reading, United Kingdom; Bologna, Italy; and Bonn, Germany. It operates one of the largest supercomputer complexes in Europe and the world's largest archive of numerical weather prediction data.
The Kyoto Protocol (Japanese: 京都議定書, Hepburn: Kyōto Giteisho) was an international treaty which extended the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that commits state parties to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, based on the scientific consensus that global warming is occurring and that human-made CO2 emissions are driving it. The Kyoto Protocol was adopted in Kyoto, Japan, on 11 December 1997 and entered into force on 16 February 2005. There were 192 parties (Canada withdrew from the protocol, effective December 2012) to the Protocol in 2020.
The European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) is an intergovernmental organisation created through an international convention agreed by a current total of 30 European Member States.
The Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) was built by the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) on the basis of a 10-Year Implementation Plan running from 2005 to 2015. GEOSS seeks to connect the producers of environmental data and decision-support tools with the end users of these products, with the aim of enhancing the relevance of Earth observations to global issues. GEOSS aims to produce a global public infrastructure that generates comprehensive, near-real-time environmental data, information and analyses for a wide range of users. The Secretariat Director of Geoss is Barbara Ryan.
The ECMWF reanalysis project is a meteorological reanalysis project carried out by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). The first reanalysis product, ERA-15, generated reanalyses for approximately 15 years, from December 1978 to February 1994. The second product, ERA-40 begins in 1957 and covers 45 years to 2002. As a precursor to a revised extended reanalysis product to replace ERA-40, ECMWF released ERA-Interim, which covers the period from 1979 to 2019. A new reanalysis product ERA5 has recently been released by ECMWF as part of Copernicus Climate Change Services. This product has higher spatial resolution and covers the period from 1979 to present. Extension up to 1940 became available in 2023.
The Global Forecast System (GFS) is a global numerical weather prediction system containing a global computer model and variational analysis run by the United States' National Weather Service (NWS).
Copernicus is the Earth observation component of the European Union Space Programme, managed by the European Commission and implemented in partnership with the EU Member States, the European Space Agency (ESA), the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), the Joint Research Centre (JRC), the European Environment Agency (EEA), the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA), Frontex, SatCen and Mercator Océan.
The European Flood Awareness System is a European Commission initiative to increase preparedness for riverine floods across Europe.
The European Union Space Programme is an EU funding programme established in 2021 along with its managing agency, the European Union Agency for the Space Programme, in order to implement the pre-existing European Space Policy established on 22 May 2007 when a joint and concomitant meeting at the ministerial level of the Council of the European Union and the Council of the European Space Agency, known collectively as the European Space Council, adopted a Resolution on the European Space Policy. The policy had been jointly drafted by the European Commission and the Director General of the European Space Agency. This was the first common political framework for space activities established by the European Union (EU).
MyOcean is a series of projects granted by the European Commission within the GMES Program, whose objective is to define and to set up a concerted and integrated pan-European capacity for ocean monitoring and forecasting. The activities benefit several specified areas of use: Maritime security, oil spill prevention, marine resources management, climate change, seasonal forecasting, coastal activities, ice sheet surveys, water quality and pollution. The series of MyOcean projects ended in 2015, and their services are now continued by the Copernicus Programme.
The Croatian Meteorological and Hydrological Service is a public entity for meteorology, hydrology and air quality in Croatia.
The Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union; also referred to as TSCG, or more plainly the Fiscal Stability Treaty is an intergovernmental treaty introduced as a new stricter version of the Stability and Growth Pact, signed on 2 March 2012 by all member states of the European Union (EU), except the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom. The treaty entered into force on 1 January 2013 for the 16 states which completed ratification prior to this date. As of 3 April 2019, it had been ratified and entered into force for all 25 signatories plus Croatia, which acceded to the EU in July 2013, and the Czech Republic.
The Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) is a service implemented by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), launched in November 11, 2014, that provides continuous data and information on atmospheric composition. CAMS, which is part of the Copernicus Programme, describes the current situation, forecasts the situation a few days ahead, and analyses consistently retrospective data records for recent years. This service has around 10 years of developments, and its current precursor project, MACC-III, is delivering the pre-operational Copernicus Atmosphere Service. CAMS tracks air pollution, solar energy, greenhouse gases and climate forcing globally.
Horizon Europe is a 7-year European Union scientific research initiative, successor of the Horizon 2020 programme and the earlier Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development. The European Commission drafted and approved a plan for Horizon Europe to raise EU science spending levels by 50% over the years 2021–2027.
The European Union Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA) is a space agency, managing the European Union Space Programme as one of the agencies of the European Union (EU). It was initially created as the European Global Navigation Satellite Systems Supervisory Authority (GSA) in 2004, reorganised into the European Global Navigation Satellite Systems Agency in 2010, and established in its current form on May 12, 2021. EUSPA is a separate entity from the European Space Agency (ESA), although the two entities work together closely.
Hannah Louise Cloke is a British hydrologist who is Professor of Hydrology at the University of Reading. She was awarded the European Geosciences Union Plinius Medal in 2018 and appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2019 Birthday Honours.
Destination Earth also known as DestinE, is an initiative from the European Commission of Ursula Von der Leyen. It aims to create a digital simulation of Earth with a digital twin that will be used to better understand the effects of climate change and environmental disasters and to permit policymakers more effectively respond to these issues.
Florence Rabier is a French meteorologist who is Director-General of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. She works on numerical weather prediction. She was appointed a Knight of the Legion of Honour in 2014.
Climate Information Services (CIS) (or climate services) entail the dissemination of climate data in a way that aids people and organizations in making decisions. CIS helps its users foresee and control the hazards associated with a changing and unpredictable climate. It encompasses a knowledge loop that includes targeted user communities' access to, interpretation of, communication of, and use of pertinent, accurate, and trustworthy climate information, as well as their feedback on that use. Climate information services involve the timely production, translation and delivery of useful climate data, information and knowledge.
