Collaborative infrastructure Sarah Puschmann, science writer, EUMETSAT TEAM WORK The European Weather Cloud, jointly developed by EUMETSAT and ECMWF, is using cloud infrastructure to boost collaboration in the weather and climate domain G iven the vast quantity of available meteorological data, the accuracy of current models and methods and recent technological advances in computing infrastructure, the 2020s can be considered a golden age of meteorology. However, the discoverability, volume and complexity of weather and climate data pose increasing challenges for those who want to develop better applications for using this data, for example to protect society from impending natural hazards. The European Weather Cloud (EWC) has been established to enable users of climate and weather data to surmount these obstacles. It facilitates collaboration in Europe among scientists, developers and others, enabling people to work together on large, complex meteorological data sets free from the constraints of their local computing infrastructure. R THE EWC IN ACTION: AIDING CLIMATE STUDIES esearchers from the Laboratory of Space, Geophysics and Oceanographic Studies (LEGOS), based at the Midi-Pyrénées Observatory in Toulouse, France, use the EWC to access data from Meteosat satellites quickly and easily. Looking to better understand the climate in the tropics, LEGOS researchers use the data to study mesoscale convective systems – collections of storms that contribute to extreme precipitation in the tropics. Without a cloud computing platform, it would have taken LEGOS researchers months to download the Meteosat climate data records stored at EUMETSAT, which span more than 40 years. Furthermore, processing and storing the data would have required far more computing facilities and capacity than they had available. Using the EWC, LEGOS researchers can access a large quantity of data directly, without the need to download, process or store it themselves, enabling the scientists to carry out studies that include a research collaboration with EUMETSAT to gain deeper insight into climate processes. 36 • www.meteorologicaltechnologyinternational.com • April 2024