Abstract
Abstract. The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) mission is to deliver high-quality global medium-range numerical weather predictions and monitoring of the Earth system to its member states. The modelling and forecasting of natural hazards are an important part of this mission. Challenges in this area include the integration of innovative observations into the Earth system; realistic representations of water, energy and carbon cycles; coupling and initialisation of all Earth system components; adequate representation of uncertainties; supporting the development of user-specific products to enable optimal decision-making under uncertainties; and advances in software engineering. The new ECMWF strategy identified three pillars to sustain its future development (ECMWF, 2021a): science and technology (world-leading weather and Earth system science, cutting-edge technology and computational science), impact (high-quality products fit for purpose, efficient and easy access to products), and people (inspiring and hiring the best experts). Progress in all these areas will need enhanced collaboration with member states and partners across Europe and beyond.
Highlights
The forecasting of weather, hydrology, the cryosphere and oceans and the representation of past and future climates are both key elements in the understanding and prediction of natural hazards
The required step changes in science and forecasting can be grouped into three pillars (ECMWF, 2021a): science and technology, impact, and people
Earth system model predictions can be substantially improved if we maximise the use of current observations (Fig. 1), e.g. using all available information from existing satellites over land, snow and sea ice in cloudy, rainy and clear conditions (Geer et al, 2018)
Summary
The forecasting of weather, hydrology, the cryosphere and oceans and the representation of past and future climates are both key elements in the understanding and prediction of natural hazards. Forecasts of the Earth system are important to prepare for humanitarian disasters resulting from, for example, tropical cyclones (Emerton et al, 2020; Magnusson et al, 2019), floods (Lavers et at 2020), extreme precipitation events (Lavers et al, 2018) or heat waves (Napoli et al, 2020). Representations of the past climate, known as reanal-
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
