European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts
The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) is an independent intergovernmental organisation supported by most of the nations of Europe. It is based at three sites: Shinfield Park, Reading, United Kingdom; Bologna, Italy; and Bonn, Germany. It operates one of the largest supercomputer complexes in Europe and the world's largest archive of numerical weather prediction data.[1]
Established
1975 
(49 years ago)
United Kingdom
ECMWF aims to provide accurate medium-range global weather forecasts out to 15 days and seasonal forecasts out to 12 months.[12] Its products are provided to the national weather services of its member states and co-operating states as a complement to their national short-range and climatological activities, and those national states use ECMWF's products for their own national duties, in particular to give early warning of potentially damaging severe weather.
ECMWF's core mission is to:[13]
To deliver this core mission, the Centre provides:
The Centre develops and operates global atmospheric models and data assimilation systems for the dynamics, thermodynamics and composition of the Earth's atmosphere and for interacting parts of the Earth-system. It uses numerical weather prediction methods to prepare forecasts and their initial conditions, and it contributes to monitoring the relevant parts of the Earth system.
Work and projects[edit]
Forecasting[edit]
Numerical weather prediction (NWP) requires input of meteorological data, collected by satellites and earth observation systems such as automatic and crewed weather stations, aircraft (including commercial flights[14]), ships and weather balloons. Assimilation of this data is used to produce an initial state of a computer model of the atmosphere, from which an atmospheric model is used to forecast the weather. These forecasts are typically:
Copernicus[edit]
The centre currently serves as the Entrusted Entity responsible for delivery of two of the Services of the EU's Copernicus Programme. The two services are the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)[23] and the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S).[24]
The Centre arranged to move its Copernicus operations away from Reading and into Bonn (Germany).[3][9] The move has been directly attributed to Brexit.[9][10]
ECMWF comprises 23 European countries:
It also has co-operation agreements with other states: Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Georgia, Hungary, Israel, Latvia, Lithuania, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Morocco, Romania and Slovakia.