The ECMWF team who developed the Copernicus Climate Change Service’s Climate Data Store received the European Meteorological Society (EMS) Technology Achievement Award 2019 in Copenhagen on 9 September 2019.
EMS President Bob Riddaway (middle) presented the certificate to Climate Data Store (CDS) senior team members Baudouin Raoult (left) and Cedric Bergeron (right) during the Society’s Annual Meeting. The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) is implemented by ECMWF on behalf of the EU.
The award recognises that the CDS “is empowering a wide range of user communities worldwide to work on addressing climate change – the most challenging environmental phenomenon worldwide of modern times – and allowing the development of services to help mitigate its impacts”.
“The Copernicus Climate Change Service’s Climate Data Store supports climate services in Europe by providing seamless access to high-quality climate datasets, past, present and future,” the award citation says.
The CDS team emphasised that developing the system has been and continues to be a collaborative enterprise. “We are collecting this award on behalf of the many colleagues who have helped to make the CDS a cornerstone of C3S,” CDS Manager Cedric Bergeron said.
Free and open data
The CDS makes a wide range of authoritative climate-related data freely available to users ranging from public authorities and companies to scientists and interested citizens. In just over a year, it has attracted more than 20,000 users.
A dedicated user support team provides feedback to the development team to help them plan future strategic upgrades.
“In addition to the data, the CDS includes a Toolbox which allows users to process the data online,” senior CDS team member Angel Lopez Alos says. “We are working to improve the Toolbox to make it even easier for users to analyse, monitor and help to predict the effects of climate change.”
Developers, expert users and other end users can interact with the CDS at different levels.