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ACCORD consortium

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Published on Tuesday, 01 December 2020 13:25

Written by Frank Lantsheer

ACCORD consortium: a new collaboration
meteorological services strengthen their collaboration in the establishment
of a single consortium

Friday, November 27, 2020, twenty-six meteorological services from Europe and North Africa have decided to strengthen their collaboration to improve weather forecasts in the establishment of a single consortium, named ACCORD.  To improve short-range [1] weather predictions, and deliver a better service to society.

As a result, the modern-day world of meteorology is turning a new page in its history. It is now time to deepen and broaden this new international cooperation, ensuring best possible support to society.  In this way, our community will continue to help protect life and property and support societal well being. Our improved services will better help citizens to mitigate the impact of weather and climate related threats to life, health, economy and property in our countries and support authorities to adapt their services to climate change.

Europe has a long tradition of cooperation in meteorology: Meteorological satellites are procured and operated by EUMETSAT, other observations are coordinated under EUMETNET, and global medium-range [2] numerical weather predictions are produced by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF).

On the other hand, the high spatial resolution short-range numerical weather predictions are the responsibility of National Meteorological Services (NMSs). Since the 1980s, these NMSs have collaborated within the frame of several regional consortia.

Today three of these consortia [3] have decided to enter into a larger partnership, resulting in a unique collaboration of 26 countries of Europe and Northern Africa. Together these NMSs will further develop the science of weather prediction and new algorithms to face the challenges of parallel computer architectures and massive data flows, all for the sake of more accurate weather forecasts. The new consortium will also collaborate closely with EUMETSAT, EUMETNET and ECMWF.   

The new partnership will advance and strengthen research and development of the common Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) model code and extend the cooperation on the new components of the complex system with more efficient maintenance. The production and delivery of operational NWP forecasts will remain organized on a national or regional basis, regularly upgraded with the innovations developed in the common consortium

With the joint effort, we will accelerate the improvement of weather forecasts.

NWP video (you tube)

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[1]     short-range: up to about 3 days ahead

[2]     medium-range: from about 3 to about 10 days ahead

[3]    ALADIN (Algeria, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, France, Hungary, Morocco, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Tunisia,Turkey), LACE (Austria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia) and HIRLAM (Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Lithuania, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden)
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