The Ruisdael Observatory: advancing atmospheric science in the Netherlands

As of  2018 the atmospheric research community in the Netherlands, including universities, agencies and institutes, joined forces in the Ruisdael Consortium, named after the 17th century painter who depicted the skies over Holland with a realistic interplay of light, clouds, and the land surface. The consortium centres its activities around the combined use of experimental facilities and model development, aiming at better forecasts of the weather and air quality, as well as getting deeper insights into climate processes. While the driving force behind the consortium results from the urge to advance science, the societal spin-off is hard to neglect. The observational data as well as the high resolution models increasingly find their use in industrial applications such as the generation of sustainable energy, or the evaluation of air quality in urban areas. The Ruisdael Consortium acts as an agenda setting body in the atmospheric sciences, and contributes to the long term strategy of science in the Netherlands, and with its combination of academia, applied institutes and agencies it embodies a direct link between education, research, application and public outreach.

Selected examples of the Ruisdael activities are

• Coordinated actions in Amsterdam to study the urban climate for improving climate adaptation strategies in cities,
• Studies in Rotterdam of the interplay between climate change and potentially enhanced virus outbreaks,
• Fine weather forecasts for the wind and solar energy production.

With the Ruisdael stations currently confined to land, plans are being developed to install additional station on the North Sea, making use of the proliferation of wind farms in a co-creative setting of the scientific and industrial communities.