The challenges and opportunities for meteorological science and services are growing continuously: climate change and more frequent extreme weather events with high socio-economic impact pose growing threats. However, new opportunities emerge from increasing computer and telecommunication resources, artificial intelligence, new observing systems and technologies as well as a broader awareness of the potential of meteorological science and applications across diverse communities, from meteorological research organisations and companies to society and stakeholders.
Thus, to create optimal products, the weather and climate science and business communities have to adequately combine information and data from a variety of sources. However, such seamless products require the intertwining of communities based on a holistic Earth system concept. This means bridging temporal and spatial scales and breaking down scientific, bureaucratic and other intellectual and practical barriers. Over the past decades, an increasing number of transdisciplinary consortia and collaborations – such as the German Hans Ertel Centre for Weather Research – have taken the first steps towards this endeavour by connecting research institutions, universities, educational facilities, public and private weather and climate services, society and stakeholders on a national, regional and global level. These coordinated and cooperative efforts across communities bring considerable benefits to all parties involved. In addition, they provide the basis for improved adaptation and mitigation strategies to reduce disaster risk and losses in a changing climate. However, the building and sustainable funding of cross-fertilisation in science and services require new and significant investments.
The EMS Annual Meeting 2022 will focus on interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches: “Connecting communities to deliver seamless weather and climate science and services” puts the spotlight on sharing knowledge, findings, challenges, experiences, and visions to create future seamless Earth system science and translating this into weather and climate products and services with the following values.
