Mr. Hans Henning Blomeyer-Bartenstein, Deputy German Ambassador to London, paid a visit to the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) on Wednesday, 2 May 2007. He was accompanied by Mr. Friedhelm Bertelsmeier, First Secretary Transport at the London Embassy.
Dominique Marbouty, Director of ECMWF, gave an overview of the Centre’s main research and operational activities, emphasising the accuracy of ECMWF’s forecasting system, the intense use of satellite data, and the Centre’s supercomputing expertise.
Mr. Blomeyer-Bartenstein was particularly interested the Centre’s role with regard to climate change discussions. Mr. Marbouty drew his attention to an EU-funded project called GEMS, co-ordinated by ECMWF, which is also responsible for developing and operating the global forecasting system for atmospheric composition. He also highlighted the Centre’s achievements in re-analysis, providing a reliable analysis of the earth’s past climate in the recent six decades.
Noting the high quality of the Centre’s output provided to national weather services and to the meteorological scientific community, Mr. Blomeyer-Bartenstein said: “I would like to congratulate the Director and the staff of ECMWF for their excellent achievements in numerical weather prediction and I hope that all Member States and Co-operating States will continue to provide the necessary resources for the Centre to continue its valuable work in future.”
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