BSC supports and collaborates in the Spanish candidacy to host the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts in Barcelona

29 May 2020

BSC and AEMET will play a key role in the management of the Spanish candidacy.

The center will host 150 people in an initial phase, with the possibility of increasing it to 250 in the coming years

The Council of Ministers agreed today to support the Spanish candidacy to host the climate headquarters of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF).

The Spanish candidacy has chosen Barcelona, considering that it meets the ideal scientific and innovative conditions to host an infrastructure of this nature, with a community that researches and develops projects from the EU's Earth observation program, Copernicus.

Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC), which leads several contracts for the development of the Copernicus program, enthusiastically supports this candidacy and is collaborating in its preparation. The State Meteorological Agency (AEMET) will also play an important role in the candidacy, which represents Spain on the council of member countries of the organism and contributes 3.3 million euros to the organism every year.

Francisco J. Doblas-Reyes, director of the BSC Earth Sciences department, considers that "the establishment of the third ECMWF headquarters in Barcelona would represent a unique opportunity for institutions and companies working on solving environmental problems, both locally and internationally.

The presence of ECMWF in Spain may be the key element for the research community in environmental services to make a leap in quantity and quality to respond to the socio-economic challenges posed by the European Green Deal.

BSC, with its excellent joint development links with ECMWF in multiple aspects, will contribute to the preparation of the Spanish proposal. "

The benefits of the Copernicus program in the host country are multiple and of great added value: scientific, industrial, economic, financial, improvement of local environmental policies, etc. From a scientific point of view, the presence of an activity with high value such as CAMS, C3S or CEMS services would generate a new boost to the local and national ecosystem and multiple synergies with society and private companies.

In the initial phase, the main component of this third facility would be the Atmosphere (CAMS) and Climate Change (C3S) services of the European Copernicus program and the flood, fire and drought prediction activities of the Emergency Service Operational Center (CEMS). Beginning in 2021, Copernicus' greenhouse gas emissions monitoring service will also be relocated, to continue with staff involved in other ECMWF activities funded by the European Commission. For this, it is estimated that initially the chosen headquarters would host about 150 people, with the possibility of increasing this number to 250 workers in the medium term.

 

Read Ministry press release here.