Collaboration in meteorology and climate sciences between academic and operational stakeholders in France

The French academic sector in the field of environment sciences, including meteorology and climate, is organized through a cooperation among several national organizations and universities. National organizations and universities operating in the field of environmental sciences belong to a federation called AllEnvi, initiated in 2010. Météo-France, the French national eather service, is a founding member of AllEnvi, among 11 other organizations such as CNRS, BRGM, CEA, Ifremer, IRD, INRAE etc. 15 further associate members contribute to AllEnvi activities. AllEnvi brings together their top executives through regular meetings, and discusses and implements joint strategies through topical groups involving relevant experts. This enables regular discussions between key players in the field of environmental sciences at the national scale. One of the mandates of AllEnvi is to develop research agenda covering its various domains, and provide guidance for strategic priorities to its members and the national research funding agency ANR.

In the field of meteorology and climate, a key long lasting collaboration has developed between Météo-France and CNRS, the national research council. In particular, Météo-France and CNRS jointly run several research entities, in particular the Centre National de Recherches Météorologiques (CNRM) based in Toulouse, Grenoble and Lannion and the Laboratoire de l’Atmosphère et des Cyclones (LACy) on Réunion Island also affiliated with Université de la Réunion. These laboratories bring together scientific, technical and administrative staff from these organizations around common goals and projects. Météo-France, CNRS and CNES, the national space agency, operate research aircrafts through the SAFIRE fleet. Other key long-lasting collaborations include CERFACS and Mercator Ocean International. 

CNRS, Météo-France and other research organizations, provide funding to national programmes in the field of meteorology and climate under a common scientific committee. Scientists from virtually any laboratory can apply for seed funding from these programmes, which also contribute to developing and maintain strong ties among the scientific community, including on emerging topics.  

This manifold collaboration at the national level is also reflected at the European level, through research infrastructures, European partnerships (including ECMWF and the consortium for numerical weather prediction ACCORD), and contributions to research and innovations calls from the Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe programmes.

These daily interactions between Météo-France and its academic partners, implemented in particular through its research laboratories CNRM and LACy, are mutually beneficial to improving weather forecasting and climate modelling tools and their operational uses for meteorological and climate services, as well as using these tools for addressing new or persistent scientific challenges. This close cooperation also contributes to maintaining research and development activities at Météo-France as close as possible to the highest scientific standards. This contribution will summarize the implementation research cooperation in particular between Météo-France and the academic sector, its successes, challenges, lessons learnt and perspectives.