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How to cite: Venuti, F., Modigliani, U., Rabier, F., and Pappenberger, F.: ECMWF moves to open data, EMS Annual Meeting 2021, online, 6–10 Sep 2021, EMS2021-312, https://doi.org/10.5194/ems2021-312, 2021.

Weather observations are a key component in the value chain to create societal benefits in meteorology. They are not just essential input to numerical weather prediction models but also core to many other applications ranging from risk assessment for insurance applications, drought monitoring in agriculture, and integration of renewable energy into the power grids.

In order to maximize the return on public investment into measurement network infrastructure and operation of weather stations, a wide use of the generated data is essential. This has been confirmed just recently by an evaluation of the European Commission on high-value datasets.

While in recent years, operators of various national and regional grids have increasingly made their measurement data publicly available, there was no transparent monitoring in place about the evolution of open data from weather stations and the availability and distribution of data for specific parameters.

In order to assess the status of open and freely available weather observations in Europe, we have captured all freely available weather observations as made available on the opendata.dwd.de server of Deutscher Wetterdienst. These observations have been decoded and stored in a database system. We compared the availability of data from weather stations to the overall station list in the ECOMET catalogue.

We will present which countries provide comprehensive sets of their weather observations as open data and also evaluate the temporal frequency of the available measurements. We have also investigated if there has been an evolution of open data from January 2020 until recently.

Furthermore, we will show insights into availability of specific parameters, in particular hourly measurements of the amount of precipitation, wind gusts and global radiation and how this impacts the value creation in downstream services.

How to cite: Schulze, D.: Open data for weather observations in Europe – a status review, EMS Annual Meeting 2021, online, 6–10 Sep 2021, EMS2021-82, https://doi.org/10.5194/ems2021-82, 2021.

Since 2019, ECMWF (European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts) together with EUMETSAT (European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites) initiated a project named “European Weather Cloud” (https://www.europeanweather.cloud/) expected to become operational in 2022. The strategic goal of this initiative is to build and offer a community cloud infrastructure on which Member and Co‐operating States of both organizations can create and manage on demand virtual resources enabling access to the ECMWF’s Numerical Weather Predication (NWP) products and EUMETSAT’s satellite data in a timely, efficient, and configurable fashion. Moreover, one of the main goals is to involve more entities in this initiative in a joint effort to form a federation of clouds/data offered from our Member States, for the maximum benefit of the European Meteorological Infrastructure.

During the current pilot phase of the project several use cases have been defined, mostly aimed at service developers own organisations. These broad categories of use cases are:

• Web services exploring hosted datasets.
• Infrastructure allowing the running of an atmospheric dispersion model on ECMWF forecast data.
• Platform to support the training of machine learning models on archive datasets.
• Platform to support workshops and training courses (DWD/ICON model training, various ECMWF training courses)
• Environment facilitating research in collaboration with external partners.

Some examples of the use cases currently developed at the European Weather Cloud are:

• The Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium prepares ECMWF forecast data for use in a local atmospheric dispersion model.
• The German weather service, which is already feeding maps generated by a server it deployed on the cloud into its public GeoPortal service.
• The Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute hosts a climate explorer web application based on KNMI climate explorer data and ECMWF weather and climate reanalyses.
• EUMETSAT Numerical Weather Prediction Satellite Application Facility (NWP SAF) develops a training module will develop a training module for a fast radiative transfer model (RTTOV) based on ERA5 reanalysis data.
• EUMETSAT and ECMWF joint use case assess bias correction schemes for the assimilation of radiance data based on several satellite data time series.

During the current pilot phase of the project, both organizations have organised user and technical workshops to actively engage with the meteorological community to align the evolution of the European Weather Cloud to reflect and satisfy their goals and needs.

In this presentation, the status of the project will be analysed describing the existing infrastructure, the offered services and how these are accessed by the end-users along with examples of the existing use cases. The plans, next steps for the evolution and the transition to operations of the European Weather Cloud and its relationship with other projects and initiatives will conclude the presentation.

How to cite: Baousis, V., Modigliani, U., Pappenberger, F., Palkovic, M., Siemen, S., Abellan, X., and Kominos, C.: European Weather Cloud at the service of the European Meteorological Infrastructure (EMI), EMS Annual Meeting 2021, online, 6–10 Sep 2021, EMS2021-120, https://doi.org/10.5194/ems2021-120, 2021.

The EU weather value chain has developed vigorously, with private services growing at a 20% p.a. rate over the past decade. Growth has also happened amongst national services, and the sector of instrument providers.

The study uses a value chain model of five steps : 1. Instrument Supply, 2. Networks, (for operation of Measurements & Observations), 3. Data processing, 4. Products (Mass distribution) and 5. Tailored services.

The study analyses the entire value chain in selected countries, mainly United Kingdom, Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, France, Spain, Italy and Czechia, including all steps from instrument to service providers, including national and private services, and quantifies their evolution over the period from 2010 to 2019. It uses annual reports, press articles and other sources to estimate development of value creation, in terms of annual budgets, revenues, profits and employment. It also attempts to identify the sources of uncertainty for the assessments and propose techniques to reduce this uncertainty.

Further, it classifies the value creation by value chain step and market segment, and attempts to differentiate between domestic and export of products and services.

The study further compares the value creation by inhabitant, GDP, area and other social parameters, to create parameters which can be used for characterising the value chain, and developing a better understanding of causal factors enhancing the development of the weather value chain in selected countries. These parameters are then compared with those of more other highly developed value chains in the USA and Japan.

In a final step, the study makes some projections about future evolution of the weather value chain and recommendations for the future development of a more productive and beneficial value chain.

How to cite: Gutbrod, K.: The EU weather value chain - past, current and future perspectives, EMS Annual Meeting 2021, online, 6–10 Sep 2021, EMS2021-183, https://doi.org/10.5194/ems2021-183, 2021.

The  weather information value chain provides a framework for characterising the production, communication, and use of information by all stakeholders in an end-to-end warning system. Since the generation of weather warning and climate services has become more complex, both technically and organizationally, the  value chain concept has become a popular tool for describing and assessing the production, use and  benefits of such services.

The end-to-end warning system for high impact weather brings together hazard monitoring, modelling and forecasting, risk assessment, communication and preparedness activities and systems and processes which enable timely action to reduce risks. Weather and associated warning services are typically developed and provided through a multitude of complex and malleable value chains (networks), often established through co-design, co-creation and co-provision.  

A new international project under the WMO World Weather Research Programme is using value chain approaches to describe and evaluate the end-to-end warning system for high impact weather. Its aims are

(1) To review value chain approaches used to describe weather, warning and climate services to assess and provide guidance on how they can be best applied in a high impact weather warning context that involves multiple users and partnerships;

(2) To generate an easily accessible means (an End-to-End Warning Chain Database) for scientists and practitioners involved in researching, designing and evaluating weather-related warning systems to review previous experience of high impact weather events and assess their efficacy using value chain approaches.

We encourage the research and operational community to participate in this project by contributing case studies of high impact events and collaborating in their analysis. Integration of the physical and social sciences in this project will lead to new insights that we hope will ultimately improve the effectiveness of warnings for high impact weather.

How to cite: Ebert, E., Hoffmann, D., and Mooney, C.: Using Value Chain Approaches to Evaluate End-to-End Warning Systems, EMS Annual Meeting 2021, online, 6–10 Sep 2021, EMS2021-143, https://doi.org/10.5194/ems2021-143, 2021.

How to cite: Taalas, P., Rabier, F., Pappenberger, F., Modigliani, U., Wetterhall, F., Dacić, M., Lappi, S., and Kull, D.: South-East European Multi-Hazard Early Warning Advisory System, EMS Annual Meeting 2021, online, 6–10 Sep 2021, EMS2021-305, https://doi.org/10.5194/ems2021-305, 2021.

FOCUS-Africa is an EU Horizon 2020 project funded to co-develop tailored climate services in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region. The project, led by the WMO and started in September 2020, gathers 16 partners across Africa and Europe jointly committed to addressing the value of climate services for key economic sectors in Africa: agriculture and food security, water, energy, and infrastructure.

The project is piloting eight case studies (CSs) in five different countries involving a wide range of end-users. New services derived from seasonal and decadal forecasts are applied for food security and crop production in South Africa, Malawi, Mozambique, and Tanzania. High-resolution climate projections, as well as historical climate reanalyses, are used to support planning and investment decisions for: a railway infrastructure and a mix of renewable energies in Tanzania, hydropower generation assessment under climate change scenarios in Malawi, and water resources management in Mauritius.

For all the FOCUS-Africa’s case studies, socio-economic impact assessment of the delivered climate services will be carried out in collaboration with the CS leaders, service providers, and end-users, by providing ex-ante and ex-post evaluations grounded in the Global Indicator Framework for the Sustainable Development Goals. The project will align the capacity development efforts with those promoted by WMO for enhancing the capabilities of the NMHSs to deliver climate services to users and will make sure that the project's innovative processes and tools will be part of the WMO training curricula.

FOCUS-Africa's expected impacts are:

• Build a strong link between the climate scientific community and stakeholders in the SADC region by leveraging the advanced scientific knowledge and strong networks of the implementing team, and by establishing dedicated channels of communications, so as to target the full value chain of our users, from the start of the project
• Advance the way in which climate information is developed by characterising end-use requirements through regular engagement
• Contribute to the advancement of the scientific knowledge in the region and strengthened support for international scientific assessments through publications and reports such as those relevant for the IPCC, through the innovative science developed by FOCUS-Africa
• Demonstrate the effectiveness of the climate information by strengthening the adaptive capacity of end-users by delivering tailored, actionable, and exploitable climate services and by estimating their socio-economic benefits across the full value chain.
• Enhance policy-making for climate adaptation in the project and other countries
• Increase women’s access to climate services

How to cite: Boscolo, R., Bastani, H., Beraki, A., Fournier, N., Marcos-Matamoros, R., Troccoli, A., Dkhissi, Y., Kamga, A., Lumsden, T., Bojovic, D., Dell'Acqua, M., Omrani, H., and Mateyisi, M.: Demonstrating the full-value chain of climate services in Southern Africa: the FOCUS-Africa project, EMS Annual Meeting 2021, online, 6–10 Sep 2021, EMS2021-460, https://doi.org/10.5194/ems2021-460, 2021.