News

Seven highly respected scientists from Europe and the United States have accepted invitations to become ECMWF Fellows from 1 January 2021. The Fellows will work closely with ECMWF on scientific and technical research in Earth system modelling, ensemble forecasting, and applications.

The ECMWF Council has selected Bonn, Germany, to host the Centre’s new and third site. The new premises will complement ECMWF’s headquarters in the UK and new data centre being developed in Italy.

On 1 December 2020 Estonia officially became a Member State of ECMWF. The Centre's Director-General, Dr Florence Rabier, welcomed Estonia's accession to full membership, saying that this new phase will make the collaboration between ECMWF and Estonia stronger and even more vibrant.

ECMWF and EUMETSAT’s joint cloud computing infrastructure for the meteorological community is entering a new phase. The focus will be on working with users currently trialling applications on the pilot infrastructure to evaluate the platform and to shape the future operational services.

ECMWF and the NWP SAF brought together almost 200 experts in a virtual workshop from 2 to 5 November to discuss how the latest research into the treatment of random and systematic errors in satellite data assimilation can help to improve weather forecasts.

The autumn 2020 issue of the ECMWF Newsletter is now available. As well as news about ECMWF staff and events, it features articles about new developments and the use that can be made of ECMWF products.

ECMWF’s 2021 events programme is set to include both virtual and physical events. It features workshops on cloud technologies, ocean data assimilation and hydrological prediction alongside established events such as our user meeting, Annual Seminar and workshop on HPC in meteorology.

The global forecasting system of the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) was successfully upgraded on 6 October, leading to improved forecasts of sea salt and dust aerosol, particulate matter and stratospheric ozone. CAMS is implemented by ECMWF on behalf of the European Commission.

New Python packages and training with Jupyter notebooks are making it simpler to access and use vast weather and climate datasets from ECMWF and Copernicus.

The first ECMWF–ESA Workshop on Machine Learning for Earth System Observation and Prediction drew a large virtual attendance of international experts in machine learning and Earth system sciences.