ECMWF

Monday 5th March

I visited the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forcasting in Reading

The ECMWF was established in 1975 by 34 member states from across Europe. It employes 250 people with a Budget of 43 million pounds. It produces forecasts for member states weather offices of Medium range (2 weeks ahead) and Long Range (up to a season ahead). It's archives now hold 22.5 Petabytes of information (22,500,000,000,000,000 bytes) which is equivalent to a stack of CD's 41km high.

The birth of contemporary weather forecasting began when a German noble organised for regular recordings to be taken across a number of sites in Canada, UK & Europe in 1795.

The orriginal map showing locations of the first weather stations, a gift to the ECMWF from Germany

 Manfred kloppel; Scientific & Technical Assistant to the Director General of the ECMWF and my guide for the day, pictured next to a small part of the super computer used to run the forecasting models

David Richardson; Head of the Meterological Operations Section discussing charts which are used to check the accuracy of forecasting Models.

This is the ECMWF boardroom where the Governing council meets. Note the Tapestry at the far end of the room. This is a styalised version of the Isobars of a severe storm which hit Europe in Feb 1953 killing 2100 people and in which 3 million had to be rescued. It hangs behind the chairman, to be a permanent reminder of the main reason for the ECMWF.