Session programme

ES – Engagement with Society

Programme Stream Moderators: Tanja Cegnar, Gerald Fleming

PSE key.1

Public information:

Tomas Molina is the Chief Meteorologist of Televisió de Catalunya in Barcelona, a position he has held since 1987. He has vast experience in the entire  broadcast media industry, working on radio broadcasting and TV Weather Forecasting.
He is an Associate Professor at the Universitat de Barcelona and recently became European Climate Pact Ambassador of the European Union. He also serves on the Board of the International Association of Broadcast Meteorology (IABM) as one of the Vice Presidents.
He has a degree in Physics and currently working on a PhD in Science  Communication from University of Barcelona.

Tomas Molina will give the Keynote Presentation of the Programme Stream Engagement with Society:

Flattening the climate curve

https://www.emetsoc.org/people/person/tomas-molina/

Co-organized by ES
Presentations
| Wed, 08 Sep, 16:00–16:30 (CEST)

ES1 – Bringing benefits to society

ES1.1

Developing the weather services value chain to serve society better.

The World Meteorological Organisation has defined a Vision for 2030 which embraces three Overarching Priorities:
• Enhancing preparedness for, and reducing losses of life and property from hydrometeorological extremes.
• Supporting climate-smart decision-making to build resilience and adaptation to climate risk.
• Enhancing socioeconomic value of weather, climate, hydrological and related environmental services.

The players in the weather services value chain include:
• National and International bodies that require government funding.
• Private sector companies that thrive in an open and competitive environment.
• Academia where new research drives scientific progress.

These players are mutually dependent and must align their strategy to deliver the WMO Vision.

This session will showcase examples of how working together is already providing tangible benefits for society and highlight opportunities for the future roadmap.

Conveners: Andrew Eccleston, Willie McCairns, Gerald Fleming
Presentations
| Fri, 10 Sep, 11:00–15:30 (CEST)
ES1.2

Please note that the EMS2021 conference will take place in a virtual format: https://www.ems2021.eu/about/virtual_format.html.

The impact of Open Data policies across Europe is becoming obvious by the variety of national and international data portals, making available a growing amount of datasets. Since all of this Open Data can be freely used, modified, and shared by anyone for any purpose, numerous applications based on these datasets have been developed. In this context, also a number of National Meteorological Services are adopting an Open Data policy. The range of spatial data offered on such Open Data services is wide and can include model forecasts, radar data, current measurements and observations, a large amount of different types of climate data and many more.

As the data has often huge volume, cloud technologies provide often a very convenient way to distribute and employ the data. Therefore, it is more and more common, that Open Data content is made available also “in the cloud”. Moreover, the data sets are provided often also via GeoWebServices, e.g. in OGC compatible WMS and WFS formats.

The session invites contributions on both technical and user focused developments related to providing and using these freely available datasets. This includes amongst others challenges and solutions related to the following topics:

• The development of client applications based on Open Data
• New ideas where and how Open Data can serve society
• New open data sets
• The development of user friendly geoportals including catalogue services, download services, visualization services, transformation services
• Tools and interfaces (APIs) for utilizing Open Data
• Opportunities and challenges regarding cloud technology including data sources, data formats, legal issues ...

The aim of the session is to bring together the provider and current/future user of Open Data portals and cloud technologies across Europe, to share their experiences and requirements.

Public information:

10:00 - 10:30 Breakout rooms for this session

Room 1: chaired by Björn Reetz and Håvard Futsæter

  1. From open data to global digital public good  |  Håvard  Futsæter
  2. FAIR principles for climate services information systems  |  Nils Hempelmann
  3. Agroclimatic atlas – prototype  |  Pavel Hájek
  4. Interactive access to climate data from Germany  |  Frank Kratzenstein
  5. DWD Geoportal – Converging open data, metadata and documentation in a user-friendly way  |  Björn Reetz

Room 2: chaired by Roope Tervo and Hella Riede

  1. Serving Open Data from mixed on-premise and cloud environment at the Finnish Meteorological Institute  |  Mikko Visa
  2. Making ECMWF Open Data more easily accessible via cloud-based services  |  Julia Wagemann
  3. NWP Data availability notifications for meteorological workflows across HPC and Cloud data centres  |  Claudio Iacopino
  4. Towards a modernized Copernicus Climate and Atmosphere Data Stores  |  Angel Alos
Convener: Hella Riede | Co-conveners: Renate Hagedorn, Roope Tervo, Björn Reetz, Håvard Futsæter
Lightning talks
| Tue, 07 Sep, 09:00–10:30 (CEST)
ES1.5

Over the past decade the development of climate services has grown into a major branch of the atmospheric science and services, and also well beyond these sectoral boundaries. This expansion has been mainly driven by the need for adaptation to climate change, while improved understanding and modelling of the climate system have also helped the development of seasonal and sub-seasonal climate services. Consequently, the expanding climate service market supports decision making in a large variety of user contexts. Furthermore, next to or instead of engendering tangible monetized benefits the use of climate services can also be motivated by the enhancement of non-monetized benefits, such as enhancement of community resilience and the rehabilitation of ecosystem services.

The economic, social, or ecological value added of climate services is often assumed to be favourable, while actual valuations have been hitherto quite rare. The uptake of climate services is nevertheless growing slower than expected by actors such as the WMO and the EU, despite the alleged self-evident value added of such services. Several recent EU projects (CLARA, EU-MACS, MARCO, S2S4E etc.) have indicated that the capability to provide an ex-ante estimate of positive net benefits would be appreciated by many potential users, and thereby promote uptake of climate services. Similarly, climate service providers and funders, as well as policy makers can benefit from ex-post evaluation and monitoring of the realized value attributable to the use of climate services. However, the application of ex-ante and ex-post valuations is not widespread, with notable limitations in systemization and comparability.

The valuation of climate services has been limited by the lack of a universal valuation approach. The applicability of methods is context sensitive and heavily affected by data availability. In many cases, methods used for the valuation of weather services or warnings cannot be used to valuate climate services, or need significant adaptation. Furthermore, for many climate services, verification of the beneficial impacts is not possible or at least not straightforward, or is problematic due to attribution challenges. Next to guidance on appropriate valuation methods, (ex-ante) valuation could benefit from widely accepted standards on terminology, quality levels, and measurement and attribution principles.

This session aims to bring together experts in the valuation of climate services and climate service providers that want to integrate ex-ante valuation capability in their service portfolio, and benefit from ex-post valuation for the improvement of existing services and development of new ones. We are looking for a broad spectrum of valuations and presentations that dwell on how ex-ante valuation capability can be integrated into climate service portfolios, such as:
• Ex-ante valuation of climate services (methods and/or applications);
• Ex-post valuation of climate services (methods and/or applications);
• Differences and commonalities in valuation at different aggregation levels (1 actor vs. 1 actor group vs. all users)
• Comparability and portability of valuation results
• Challenges for the uptake of climate services;
• Effects of institutional factors and business models on value creation and appropriation;
• Any other related topic.

Co-organized by CS
Convener: Adriaan Perrels | Co-conveners: Jaroslav Mysiak, Ilaria Vigo
Lightning talks
| Thu, 09 Sep, 09:00–10:30 (CEST)
ES1.6

This session encourages the submission of papers focusing on the engagement strategies and governance structures for climate services as they emerge from national and international efforts. This includes also the large international effort on climate services such as, for example, Copernicus, Destination Earth, My climate risk, or the Global Framework on Climate Services.

We welcome the submission of papers covering topics such as:
• Mechanisms and structures for establishing and maintaining sustainable climate services and partnerships between researchers, providers, and translators, and managing expectations of users
• Communicating capabilities and limitations of climate information (including trust, usability, and uncertainty)
• Challenges and issues arising in the provision of information about high-impact climate extremes
• Interaction with major research initiatives such as, for European downscaling, Euro-CORDEX, Med-CORDEX and VALUE and, with respect to earth observations and climate predictions and projections, the COPERNICUS programme
• Examples of information being used to support decision or policy making
• The interaction between climate and weather services

We also welcome submissions which are reflecting on:
• The need for information on different timeframes and spatial scales
• The climate service requirements emerging from different types of users, providers, and intermediaries
• Comparisons of different approaches to climate services being taken in different countries
• How the different funding and access models (e.g., publicly-funded, commercial services) lead to different typologies of services

Including EMS Young Scientist Conference Award winner
Including EMS Technology Achievement Award Recipient
Co-organized by CS
Convener: Carlo Buontempo | Co-conveners: Francisco J. Doblas-Reyes, Freja Vamborg
Lightning talks
| Wed, 08 Sep, 14:00–15:30 (CEST)
ES1.7

Many European institutions, including national hydrometeorological services, universities, private companies, and donor organizations, are involved in projects aiming to assist with the development of weather and climate services in developing and emerging countries and thereby support the achievement of several Sustainable Development Goals. This session will foster the exchange of information on recent, ongoing, or planned co-development initiatives in developing and emerging countries, providing a platform to exchange knowledge, lessons learned and good practice on effective co-development and scientific and practical achievements in the field of meteorology and climatology.
The session invites contributions from those working on co-development activities and initiatives aiming to enable countries from the developing world to improve their weather and climate service capability, such as
● the development of new weather and climate services products
● the enhancement and coordination of technical and organizational infrastructure,
● the implementation and optimization of procedures and methods, capacity building for technical and general management,
● the enhancement of education and training, the strengthening of service mindedness,
● the development of scientific capability in meteorological and climatological topics, and the related knowledge gain,
● the facilitation and fostering of international collaboration, and
● the coordination of relevant donors and funding opportunities.
Particularly welcome are presentations on lessons learnt from past or ongoing co-development initiatives, including examples of good practice and success stories, alongside reports on difficulties and challenges encountered, as well as meta-initiatives aiming at facilitating communication and collaboration. Discussion on the co-development approaches applied, focusing on their impact and sustainability, are welcome. Pure methodological discussions, however, are left to other topical sessions in the OSA program stream.

Convener: Stefanie Gubler | Co-conveners: Gerard van der Schrier, Jane Strachan, Matti Eerikäinen
Lightning talks
| Tue, 07 Sep, 11:00–12:30 (CEST)

ES2 – Communication with and within society

ES2.1

The Commmunication and Media session will cover the following topics:
• TV weather forecasts including video clips
• media and climate change issue
• use of social media to convey weather and climate information
• ways to present climatological information in an appealing way for the media and general public
• warnings in case of severe weather events, role of different media in the warning system, a single voice concept
• internet as efficient and popular media in meteorology
• monthly meteorological bulletins and annals
• radio as a traditional media for delivering weather data and forecasts
• development of new communication strategies and use of social media
• tips on how to interact with users and journalists
• perception of provided information among users
• use of new technologies
• role of press officers within the National weather services
• role of science journals and publishers
• communicating uncertainty in seasonal forecast and climate projections

Including EMS Outreach & Communication Award
Convener: Tanja Cegnar
Presentations
| Mon, 06 Sep, 09:00–11:45 (CEST)
ES2.2

Dealing with Uncertainties

Weather forecasts have matured substantially in providing reliable probabilistic predictions, with a useful quantification of forecast uncertainties. Including this information in the communication of forecasts and warnings, and integrating it into downstream models and decision-making processes has become increasingly common practice.

Including uncertainties not only implies the interpretation of ‘raw’ uncertainty information in ensemble forecasts, their post-processing, and visualization, but also the integration of a wide range of non-meteorological aspects such as vulnerability and exposure data to estimate risk and the social, psychological and economic aspects which affect human decision-making.

In this session, we aim to support a holistic perspective on issues that arise when making use of uncertainty information of weather forecasts in decision processes and applications.
We encourage contributions that investigate the application and interpretation of uncertainty information along any of, but not limited to, the following questions:
- How does the quality of the final decision depend on forecast uncertainty and uncertainty from non-meteorological parts of the decision process?
- Where, along the chain from raw forecast uncertainty to the final decision, do the largest uncertainties arise?
- How is the uncertainty information (e.g., from ensemble prediction systems, multi-models etc.) propagated through the production chain up to the final decision?
- How can we tailor information about forecast uncertainty, and its representation, to a given user group, decision process or application?
- How is uncertainty represented best in a given case (e.g., as ensemble members, PDFs, or worst/best case) to reduce complexity and computational or cognitive cost?
- How can we identify the most suitable representation for different user-groups and decision processes?
- How can we incorporate vulnerability and exposure data in a risk-based decision framework?
- How can we evaluate and quantify the value of uncertainty information for decision making in different contexts?
- What strategies help the end-user to interpret the uncertainty in forecasts when making informed decisions?
- What are the benefits of impact-based or risk-based forecasts and warnings in decision-making (including for disaster risk reduction)?
- How can the interaction between scientists and end-users help to overcome reservations about uncertainty forecasts?
- How to apply in weather communication evidence of sociological and psychological factors that affect the interpretation of forecast uncertainties?
- How do we convince weather service providers to include uncertainty information when faced with their concerns that people will not understand it or that it undermines confidence in their services?

Conveners: Nadine Fleischhut, Vanessa Fundel, Jelmer Jeuring, Bruno Joly, Mark A. Liniger, Ken Mylne, Anders Doksæter Sivle
Lightning talks
| Mon, 06 Sep, 14:00–15:30 (CEST), Tue, 07 Sep, 14:00–15:30 (CEST)
ES2.3

Scientists communicate to non-peer audiences through numerous pathways including websites, blogs, public lectures, media interviews, and educational collaborations. A considerable amount of time and money is invested in this public engagement and these efforts are to a large extent responsible for the public perception of science. However, few incentives exist for researchers to optimize their communication practices to ensure effective outreach. This session encourages critical reflection on science communication practices and provides an opportunity for science communicators to share best practice and experiences with evaluation and research in this field.

We invite everybody who has been involved in any of these activities to share her/his experience in this session:
• Do you consider yourself a science communicator?
• Does your research group or institution participate in public engagement activities?
• Have you ever evaluated or published your education and outreach efforts?
– then submit an abstract on your experiences to this session.
This session would also include examples of how science can and should support decision-making. Presenters would come from public, private and research sector.

Convener: Gerald Fleming | Co-conveners: Nina Kukkurainen, Jesper Theilgaard
Lightning talks
| Mon, 06 Sep, 11:45–12:30 (CEST)

ES3 – Education and training

ES3.1

All the aspects of education in atmospheric sciences are addressed. Starting at school levels we are interested in the role and place of meteorology, climatology and related sciences in national curricula. At universities, the content and methods of curricula in atmospheric sciences and related fields, are of common interest for comparing and assessing the different European traditions and schools. Especially, presentations on new techniques of teaching used for individuals (web oriented materials available, e-learning courses, etc.) should enable to share best practices. Lifelong education and further training of meteorological personnel in NMSs as well as private companies and other stakeholders is necessary in line with the rapid development of the related disciplines, including experience from existing activities (like EUMETCAL, EUMETRAIN) and other projects. In addition, outreach to the broader public belongs to the contemporary tasks of science, while new communication tools enable direct feedbacks with the room for real citizen science development.

In particular we encourage contributions related to:
• Practices and advances in atmospheric science education;
• The role of atmospheric sciences knowledge in the education process (in school subjects like physics, geography, etc.);
• The organisation of education and training in meteorology and climatology;
• The role and methods of school activities and programmes for atmospheric sciences outreach and education;
• The presence and content of meteorology, climatology and hydrology in national curricula at all levels of education throughout Europe and beyond;
• New educational material or concepts of atmospheric science education to reach the general public;
• Use of citizen science in atmospheric science education;
• The use of new technologies and advances in atmospheric science education, e.g., on computer aided learning, web-based courses or other resources presenting contemporary problems and tasks of atmospheric sciences;
• The role and the impact of these methodologies in professional training (universities, NMSs), including among others EUMETCAL and EUMETRAIN;
• Educational aspects of EU and national projects and initiatives.

Convener: Tomas Halenka
Lightning talks
| Thu, 09 Sep, 11:00–12:30 (CEST)

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