The Panellists

• Liz Bentley, EMS President - Moderator
• Stella Kafka, Executive Director AMS
• Dominique Marbouty, EMS Vice-President
• Jordi Mazón, President Associació Catalana de Meteorologia
• Bianca Mezzina, EMS Young Scientist Awardee 2024
• Martin Rasmussen, Managing Director of Copernicus Meetings
• Dennis Schulze, Chairman PRIMET

At this event we will honour our 2024 Awardees

Presentation of EMS and Tromp Foundation Awards

• EMS Outstanding Poster Award 2023
• EMS Young Scientist Conference Awards
• EMS Young Scientist Award 2024
• Tromp Foundation Travel Awards for young scientists
• EMS Tromp Award for an outstanding achievement in biometeorology
• EMS Technology Achievement Award

EMS Silver Medal Ceremony 

• Introduction, Laudation by Heinke Schlünzen, presentation of the medal & certificate
• EMS Silver Medal Lecture by Sue Grimmond:
  Urban weather and climate: contributions and challenges to achieving a climate-neutral Europe

The three EMS Media Awards will be presented in the Communiation and media Session ES2.1 on Wednesday: https://meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EMS2024/session/50840

The Sergej Zilitinkevich Memorial Award will be handed over in session UP1.2 on Wednesday afternoon, followed by the award lecture.

The strategic lecture will be given by Ana Romero, Head of the Climate Emergency and Environmental Education Service of the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona. She will talk about the experience and practical examples of adaptation of the Barcelona Metropolitan Area to Climate Change, with an emphasis on adaptation to hot temperature extremes. 

Ana Romero Càlix 
https://www.linkedin.com/in/aromerocalix/
Ana Romero Càlix is the Head of the Climate emergency and Environmental Education Department of the Barcelona Metropolitan Area, collaborates with some university degrees, research projects and advisory boards.
She has an Environmental Sciences Bachelor from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and MBA of the Water Cycle Management by Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. 
Ana Romero was the founder of the first Spanish Association of environmental professionals.  She has worked as advisor and consultant of environmental management until 2004 when she entered the public administration.

Abstract: Adaptation of the Barcelona Metropolitan Area to Climate Change, especially to hot temperature extremes.  

The world is becoming urbanized, and this urbanization is predominantly metropolitan. In 2020, one-third of humanity lived in metropolises (60% of the global urban population), a percentage expected to reach 39% by 2035. Metropolises have become spaces of well-being and opportunities, drivers of innovation and productivity, and key actors in addressing current global challenges that surpass the administrative limits of cities. 

The Barcelona Metropolitan Area (AMB), with 3.3 million inhabitants and densities that can exceed 20,000 inhabitants/km2 is an example of it. In the AMB, climate governance operates on different scales, referring to multilevel governance. The management of metabolic flows in this demanding territory continues to be transformative of the environment and causes impacts in the Anthropocene era. 

For example, various studies show how energy poverty in summer has increased (by 30% in 2023). This is worrying in a territory where heat vulnerability affects 560,000 of its inhabitants and is concentrated in 9 of its 36 municipalities. Technological solutions involve electrifying and reducing demand for conditioned air, a controversial measure attending to GHE. 

The survey 'Perceptions and Strategies for Adapting to Extreme Heat in Vulnerable Metropolitan Households,' conducted by the Barcelona Metropolitan Area (AMB) and the Metròpoli Institute in the summer of 2023 on heat perception, demonstrated more than 60% of surveyed individuals living in these more vulnerable areas (depending on Vulnerability Index to Climate Change 2022) report having air conditioning units, yet 30.7% of them state that they cannot maintain their homes at an adequate temperature during the summer, and 19.3% during the colder months. Energy poverty is particularly worsening in these vulnerable areas with the increase in summer temperatures.

Projections of temperature evolution (heat) at the neighborhood level and how they can be modulated with certain measures (greenery, rehabilitation, shade strategies, etc.) are also essential, and the AMB is studying them with the support of various university research groups, to design effective policies that integrate climate change adaptation into urban design and maintenance, it is crucial to adopt a comprehensive and evidence-based approach.

The event Meet the Editors enables a direct interaction between members of the Editorial Board and prospective authors and the readership community of JEMS. You are cordially invited to stop by and discuss with members of the Editorial Board.

EMS and PRIMET https://primet.org/ are inviting Early Career Scientists to this networking and career advice event. This is open to all ECSs.

Brigitte Perrin, of Switzerland, is the Head of Communication at the World Meteorological Organization, the United Nations authoritative voice on weather, climate and water. A journalist by training and a political scientist by background, she dedicated her career to opening mindsets to scientific communication and driving change across the UN. Connecting science and people on the most pressing issues of our time, primarily climate change, is her passion. She is also a scholar, having worked for several years at the University of Geneva as a specialist in the digital transformation of research and academic teaching. She worked at the Swiss National Broadcasting Corporation for ten years as a journalist.

Francisco J. Doblas-Reyes is research professor of the Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA). He develops his research activity as director of the Earth Sciences Department of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center since November 2014. Prof Doblas-Reyes has a long research experience in the understanding, simulation and prediction of climate variability and change and started working on climate services research ten years ago. He has participated and coordinated several international research projects and initiatives related to his research interests. He is currently the coordinator of two collaborative European projects and leads several national projects and research contracts. He is the author of more than 200 peer-review journal articles and has a long record of obtaining competitive computing and financial resources to support this research. He is member of several international panels. He is the direct supervisor of four senior scientists, six postdocs, two PhD students, five senior engineers and two junior engineers, and regularly works with a large variety of department members. He was coordinating lead author of the most recent Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a lead author in the Fifth Assessment Report, an author of the first European Climate Risk Assessment Report, and has been heavily involved in the design of both technical and scientific aspects of the Sixth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project.

Aaron Boone is a research director/senior scientist employed by the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique working at the Centre National de Recherches Météorologiques-Météo-France as a member of the Mesoscale Atmospheric processes branch in Toulouse, France. His research mainly focuses on land-atmosphere feedbacks on diurnal to seasonal time scales, and the modeling of continental surface processes (related to soil, vegetation and the cryosphere) for applications in operational weather forecasting, climate simulations, hydrological applications and research. 

He has led several international land model intercomparison projects, has been a member of the hydrology science team of the joint CNES-NASA satellite mission SWOT since its beginnings and led the international Land surface Interactions with the Atmosphere over the Iberian Semi-arid Environment (LIAISE) project field campaign.