Download European Collaboration

MOSAC and SRG Meetings 2014
5th-7th November 2014
MOSAC PAPER 19.22
European Collaboration
Adrian Broad
1. Introduction
As requested at last year’s MOSAG / SRG (2013) this paper provides information on Met Office
European collaboration activities. The paper will provide summaries of engagement with i)
European Commission; ii) ECMWF; iii) EUMETSAT; iv) EUMETNET v) European Space Agency
(ESA); vi) European Environment Agency (EEA); and vii) bilateral/multilateral initiatives. Main of
these focus on research and development (R&D) projects, but a significant proportion also involve
collaboration on infrastructures (observations and IT), which together with science are essential to
developing and delivering services to users.
2. European Commission
The Met Office has engaged in competing for European Framework Programme research funding
since the early mid 1990s. In 2002, a dedicated post was established in International to coordinate
and grow this funding stream. At this time (under Framework Programme 6) revenue to the Met
Office was £3/4m pa and we were successful in around one third of our bids. In 2012-13, our
revenue from Framework Programme 7 (FP7) had grown to around £2.5m pa with a success rate
of between half and two-thirds. In addition, we have secured funding from ESA and for smaller
levels of funding from the EEA (see later). Met Office funding from the European Commission has
expanded from being primarily based around observations (FAAM aircraft) and climate science in
late 1990’s to now include observations (incl. space Earth Observations), marine, climate, weather
science, space weather, applied science, transport and aviation, and IT. The Met Office has
increased its funding levels and success through a combination of increased involvement in more
work programmes of relevance; earlier sight of work programmes; and importantly increasing
engagement with UK Government officials and the European Commission on suitable topics for
future work programmes.
Up until 2012, the Met Office had only coordinated one Framework Programme project (FP6
ENSEMBLES project, which had 70+ partners). As of September 2014, the Met Office now
coordinates two FP7 projects (EUPORIAS – seasonal to decadal prediction, and EUCLEIA –
climate attribution), has been accepted to coordinate one Horizon 2020 (H2020) project
(EUSTACE – land surface temperature climate data record development), and have a proposal to
coordinate a fourth (PRIMAVERA – high resolution Earth System Modelling). The Met Office has
aspirations to coordinate further H2020 proposals.
In absolute terms the Met Office compares favourably with other meteorological organisations in
Europe for winning EU funding. Table 1 compares Met Office performance against ECMWF and
the Finnish Met Institute (FMI). Given that the Met Office uses a less favourable 50% matchfunding model than ECMWF and FMI (who use a 75% match funding model) 1 this represents
notable success, although both FMI and ECMWF have a smaller research base.
Table 1: Met Office EC funding performance compared to that of ECMWF and FMI
Organisation
ECMWF
FMI
Met Office
1
FP7 Funding pa:
FY12/13 figures
£3m
€2.2m
£2.5m
2
Total FP7 project value pa:
based on FY12/13 figures
£4m
€2.9m
£5m
The funding model has now changed under H2020 and there is only one common model in use: funding 125% of
direct costs (i.e. of staff costs). All organisations have to use this model.
2
Total value of projects is the sum of EC contribution and organisational match funding
H2020 2016/17 Work Programmes
The Met Office has interests in a significant number of H2020 work programmes:
• Excellent Science: European Research Council
• Excellent Science: Future and Emerging Technologies
• Excellent Science: European Research Infrastructures
• Industrial Leadership: Information and Communication Technologies
• Industrial Leadership: Space
• Societal Challenge 1: Health, Demographic Change and Wellbeing
• Societal Challenge 2: Food Security, Sustainable Agriculture and Forestry, Marine, Maritime
and Inland Water Research and the Bio-economy
• Societal Challenge 3: Secure, Clean and Efficient Energy
• Societal Challenge 4: Smart, Green and Integrated Transport
• Societal Challenge 5: Climate Action, Environment, Resource Efficiency and Raw Materials
• Societal Challenge 7: Secure Societies
The European Commission is beginning the process of preparing the next work programmes for
the 2-year period 2016-17. The Commission will seek input through a range of consultation
mechanisms:
1) The formal process of discussion and agreement with Member States at Programme
Committees
2) Expert Advisory Groups that it establishes
3) Other advisory mechanisms such influential groups such as the Climate Joint Programme
Initiative
4) Public consultation – web based
These consultation processes will culminate in 2016-17 Work Programme releases for the autumn
of 2015. The 2015 work programmes are currently available and the Met Office is actively involved
in discussions to participate as a significant partner in a range of different topics.
Representation roles towards the EC
The Met Office has the following representative roles and responsibilities to provide support to UK
Government towards European Commission bodies, and to coordinate partnership responses to
funding opportunities:
1) UK Government H2020 Network Group.
This is a meeting of UK Government departments and a small number of departmental
agencies, who meet periodically to share information on top level EU issues and provide advice
on UK Government priorities for H2020.
2) UK Government Joint Programme Initiatives (JPI) Network Group.
A forum for exchanging experiences on the current list of 10 European Commission supported
JPIs and how the UK should coordinate future engagement through agreed common
messaging.
3) UK Delegate on the Climate JPI Governing Board (top level governance body), alongside
NERC (Natural Environment Research Council).
4) Representation on a science expert advisory group for H2020 Societal Challenge 5. This group
provides advice to DG Research & Innovation in preparing topics for future work programmes.
5) The Met Office is in an advanced stage of discussing a collaboration agreement with the
European Commission Joint Research Centre (Sept 2014).
6) The Met Office also has links to UK government officials sitting on Programme Committees for
“European Research Infrastructures”; “Space”; Societal Challenges 2, 4, 5 and 7. The primary
function is to provide support and guidance to UK Government.
3. ECMWF
A significant proportion of collaboration between ECMWF and the Met Office centres on European
funded activities. These include European Commission (EC) funded projects (FP7 and H2020),
and some ESA projects. The EC funded projects have primarily focussed on developing and
improving global (ECMWF focus through ERA-CLIM and ERA-CLIM2) and regional (Met Office /
NMHS focus through UERRA) re-analyses, both for NWP verification and also of climate quality to
develop gridded climate data records before the satellite era. The Met Office, ECMWF and
EUMETSAT are also all involved in the H2020 proposal GAIA-CLIM (Gap Analysis for Integrated
Atmospheric ECV CLImate Monitoring) which aims to develop an improved systematic scientific
quality evaluation for climate data records which combine space and in-situ data.
Another notable area of EC funding collaboration between the Met Office and ECMWF centres on
seasonal-to-decadal (S2D) through the FP7 SPECS project (S2D climate prediction for the
improvement of European Climate Services) Other major European academic (UK, German and
Spanish universities) and meteorological institutions (Dutch, Swedish, French and Norwegian met
services) are also involved.
Collaboration on the theme of climate monitoring and improvements in climate modelling also
continues in the ESA Climate Modelling Users Group (CMUG) project. The main aim of the CMUG
is to feed climate modelling improvement requirements through into the development of climate
data records from space data (see more information below within the ESA section).
4. EUMETSAT
EUMETSAT provides a natural environment for European Met Service collaboration for processing
and developing products from satellite observations through eight Satellite Application facilities
(SAFs). The SAFs provide users with operational data and software products, each one for a
dedicated user community and application area. The Met Office leads the NWP SAF. We are also
involved in i) the Climate SAF, and ii) the Radio Occultation Meteorology (ROM) SAF. It should
also be noted that ECMWF is an integral member of the SAFs community.
Recently, over the past few years, EUMETSAT, with support from its Council, has become more
engaged with EC FP7 and H2020 projects which has on a number of occasions included national
met services. It has already been mentioned above that EUMETSAT, the Met Office and ECMWF
are all participants to the recently successful GAIA-CLIM project.
5. EUMETNET
EUMETNET (the Network of European Meteorological Services) provides a framework to enable
the weather services to work together, share ideas and best practice, and to share the costs of
major infrastructure investments. It is orientated around three major programmes of activities and
has a range of collaborative projects within each of these areas:
1) Observations: which coordinates the gathering, quality control and exchange of a range of nonspace based observations to support efficient short and medium range weather forecasting
over Europe. This collaborative activity provides significant savings to NMSs and to ECMWF in
essential infrastructure. Additionally, the projects invest in research to develop uniform
European composite products for a range of users at the multi-national and European level.
The Met Office participates in all seven observational projects, and leads the radar (OPERA)
and aviation (AMDAR) elements.
2) Forecasting: This provides a forum for the NWP consortium in Europe to exchange information
on a range of scientific development projects. The focus within EUMETNET at present is on
sharing knowledge of EPS, and Nowcasting. Additionally, EUMETNET Forecasting programme
operates and maintains the MeteoAlarm website. This is a web-based view service which
provides one and two day colour coded warnings of weather across Europe through each met
service providing its national warnings onto the website. The European Commission, through
the Emergency Response Coordination Centre based in Brussels, is a customer of the
MeteoAlarm view services.
The Met Office participates to the SRNWP-EPS and MeteoAlarm projects.
3) Climate: This programme is a compliment to the observations programme through gathering,
quality control and exchange of climate quality data records across Europe. A majority of
EUMETNET members, including the Met Office, participate through the ECA&D project
(European Climate Assessment and Dataset). Just like the Observations programme and
projects, this is an example of collaboration in infrastructure to the benefit of all. The ECA&D
project has already been used in a range of FP6, FP7 and in future H2020 projects developing
climate data records, and being used to develop and improve climate models.
6. European Space Agency (ESA)
ESA has established the "Climate Modelling User Group" (CMUG), to place a climate system
perspective at the centre of its Climate Change Initiative (CCI) programme, and to provide a
dedicated forum through which the Earth Observation Data Community and Climate Modelling
Community can work more closely together. CMUG is working with the eleven Essential Climate
Variable (ECV) projects under the CCI programme to achieve this overarching goal. Supporting
elements include:
1. Support integration within the CCI programme:
- Through requirements and user assessment from the Climate Modelling Community
- Through feedback from a “climate system” perspective
2. Foster the exploitation of Global Satellite Data Products within the Climate Modelling
Community.
- By promoting the use of CCI data sets to climate modellers.
- By building partnership and links with existing research organisations, networks and scientific
bodies of the Climate Modelling Community.
3. Assess quality and impact of individual/combined Global Satellite Data Products in Climate
Model and Data Assimilation context
- By assessing suitability of products for climate applications (e.g. climate modelling, decadal
prediction, reanalysis, etc)
- By quantifying their incremental value on model performance in an objective manner
The CMUG is led by the Met Office and includes ECMWF, Meteo-France, Max Planck Institute PI
for Meteorology, German Space Agency (DLR), Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Service,
and Institute Pierre Simon Laplace (IPSL) from France. The Met Office is also a partner in two of
the current eleven ESA CCI projects: the ECVs on SST and Land cover.
Additionally, the Met Office is a partner in two other ESA funded activities:
• Space Situation Awareness (SSA) project. Together with European Commission funded
projects (FP7 and H2020) this collective R&D effort provides the scientific investment to
improve space weather forecast systems. The Met Office participation is another example of
combining infrastructure (space observations), together with expert scientific partners across
Europe to improve the models which provide the operational services delivered to a range of
users and customers.
• SMOS and SOS (Soil Moisture and Sea Ocean Salinity) project. This aims to compare
observations against numerical model forecasts and analyses to understand model
performance and model errors, and hence make model improvements. The Met Office is
working with Irish and French partners under this project.
7. European Environment Agency (EEA)
The European Topic Centre on Climate Change impacts, vulnerability and Adaptation (ETC/CCA)
is a Consortium of European Organizations contracted by the EEA. The 2014-2018 ETC/CCA
Consortium is made up of 14 Partner Organisations, including the Met Office, from EEA member
countries, and is led by the Italian Euro-Mediterranean Centre on Climate Change (CMCC). Since
January 2011 it has assisted the EEA in supporting EU policy development on Climate Change
impacts, vulnerability and Adaptation and disaster risk prevention by providing relevant information
and contributing to the harmonisation, quality assessment and exchange of data and/or
information. This encompasses:
• Knowledge base, data and indicators on climate change and its impacts across sectors and
regions;
• Assessment of climate change vulnerabilities and natural hazard risks to society and
ecosystems;
• Current or planned adaptation strategies and actions;
• Capacity building in EEA member countries.
Whilst, not being considered a direct scientific activity, the ETC CCA nevertheless serves to
indicate the broad collaborations in European which the Met Office engages in to ensure that
expert scientific consultancy advice is provided in support of both national and European policy
advice. It is a useful activity for the Met Office in providing a forum for scientific knowledge
exchange with experts from other countries, particularly in climate impact and application themes.
8. Bilateral / multilateral
In addition to the above mechanisms, the Met office also collaborates multi-laterally and bi-laterally
in Europe. One important area of collaboration not mentioned so far concerns model code
development, particularly with regard to i) portability onto different HPC platforms; ii) common code
development; and iii) improving scalability of code. ENES (European Network of Earth System
Modelling) is an important collaborative framework which the Met Office, a number of European
national met Services, and ECMWF are members of. The FP7 IS-ENES project (Infrastructure for
the European Network of Earth System Modelling) is a European Commission funded project
which is coordinated through ENES.
Through its responsibilities as a VAAC (Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre) for Northern Europe and
NW Atlantic region, the Met Office has over the past 4 years been involved in multi-lateral
cooperation with partners to improve the modelling and observational capability (both near-field
and far-field) for volcanic ash and associated particulate matter. These have recently been put to
the test during the elevated alert state for Icelandic volcanoes over summer 2014 and have proved
to be beneficial in providing improved access to more observational information of source terms;
and better scientifically developed products for aviation customers. This collaboration has most
noticeably been with the Icelandic Meteorological Organisation.
The Met Office has recently being engaging in a small number of bilateral discussions with a range
of Met Services within Europe to understand their science to services and partnership activities
with the view to exploring specific collaboration activities. We are in the process of developing joint
applied science project plans with 2-3 different met services focussing on specific sector needs
which are common to both our countries. The expectation is to collaborate to share experiences,
knowledge and accelerate “science to services” developments of mutual benefit and in partnership.
9. Summary
European collaboration within the Met Office is a continually growing activity, recognising the
growing European and international dimension to weather and climate. Collaboration in Europe is
many faceted, but with particular emphasis on collaboration to:
• Maintain essential infrastructure (observations and technology);
• To engage in scientific knowledge exchange to advance and accelerate “science to services”;
and
• To provide opportunities to partner in service delivery.
This whole agenda is becoming more important as Disaster Risk Management (DRM) increasing
moves up the political agenda. The meteorological community as a collective whole, and through
national public service mandates and tasks, will need to continue to collaborate and cooperate to
play a major role in responding to the challenges and opportunities DRM will place upon
communities at the global, continental, national and sub-national level.