Projects

MedEWSa is a three-year project (2023-2026) funded by the Horizon Europe program and coordinated by the World Meteorological Organization, involving 30 European and non-European partners, including ItaliaMeteo Agency .The main objective of MedEWSa is to realize new solutions to intervene promptly, accurately and effectively during the outbreak of extreme weather events, starting with the definition of accurate financial forecasts and early warning systems (EWS).Specifically, MedEWSa will provide a sophisticated, comprehensive and innovative pan-European-Mediterranean-African solution that, from existing tools, will develop an integrated multi-hazard EWS impact-based approach.In the eight pilot sites carefully selected on the basis of geographic area and vulnerability, four pairs of test areas will be created with the aim of delving into the following specific risks:- Greece (Attica) – Ethiopia (National Parks): fire and extreme weather events (drought, wind)- Italy (Venice) – Egypt (Alexandria/Nile Delta): coastal flooding and storm surges- Slovakia (Kosice) – Georgia (Tbilisi): floods and landslides- Spain (Catalonia) – Sweden (nationwide): heat waves, droughts and fires.These pilot actions should be able to demonstrate the transferability and versatility of the tools developed in MedEWSa.The Agency’s contribution is mainly related to the Italian pilot case (Venice), which includes support to the other technical partners in order to:- improve high-resolution sea level rise forecasts from the meteorological scale to the sub-seasonal scale- strengthen EWSs for flooding in Venice in the short term- lay the groundwork for preparing an operational system extended to the sub-seasonal time horizon– Promote collaboration and sharing of knowledge and technology among countries.

Project website: https://www.medewsa.eu/

ALBATROSS is a 42-month project (2023-2027), funded by the Horizon Europe program and coordinated by the University of Bologna, involving 18 European and African partners, including ItaliaMeteo Agency.ALBATROSS is based on the understanding that increasing vulnerability due to climate change requires cross-sectoral management of territories with bottom-up approaches based on active community participation. Climate change, in fact, intensifies territorial risk and has a serious impact on migration phenomena, affecting, in particular, sub-Saharan Africa.Therefore, it is necessary to define more integrated strategies that simultaneously support sustainable growth pathways and climate resilience development in the African context.ALBATROSS aims to address these challenges by providing innovative and relevant tools and knowledge for decision-making through the co-creation of climate services that will enable the analysis of different factors on ecosystem health, food security, and socioeconomic vulnerability. The ALBATROSS methodological approach will be tested and validated in different areas of the sub-Saharan region through co-design and co-assessment with key stakeholders from potential adaptation actions and plans linked directly to spatial needs.The Agency will provide valuable input in data extrapolation and information processing through modeling techniques linked in double strand with multifunctional adaptation strategies to counter forced migration, biodiversity loss, and hydro-meteorological risk in the sub-Saharan region.

Project website: https://albatross-project.eu/

The ItaliaMeteo Agency is partner of the project GLORI (Global-to-Regional ICON) Digital Twin, developing a configurable on-demand global-to-regional short-range high-resolution digital twin of the Earth’s weather system. GLORI is developed in a tri-lateral collaboration between Germany, Italy, and Switzerland, including operational centres as well as research institutes of these three countries, and with support by computing centres, to improve availability of and access to cutting-edge weather and extremes forecasting data for decision-making.

For Italy and Germany this project belongs to the bilateral cooperation programme IDEA-S4S (Italia – Deutschland science-4-services network in weather and climate), which aims at creating a hub of excellence for cutting edge research and translating the findings into improving operational services and university education.

GLORI provides more timely information needed for decision making and early warnings, such as short-range global and European storm-resolving km-scale (~3 km horizontal) predictions, as well as regional very high-resolution predictions (~500 m horizontal) on selected prototype-domains, the Alpine area and the Italian peninsula.

The Twin will facilitate a seamless connection between weather forecasts for parameters such as, e.g. precipitation, and the related impacts on hydrology, energy systems, urban environments, agriculture, and others. It will build on the existing forecasting system ICON, but will feature enhanced capabilities, such as higher model resolution, which is especially important in complex mountainous terrain, like the Alps. Selected use cases of flood forecasting (precipitation), energy production (wind, sunshine duration, Saharan dust events) or health applications (pollen, heat) will demonstrate the improved quality and usability of the forecast.

GLORI ingredients
Configurable and on-demand
The data generated by the digital twin will be accessible to users with different needs and data access can be adjusted by the user both in type and frequency of tailored forecast for different applications.
Global-to-regional
Based on the prediction capacity of the ICON weather and climate model, the digital twin can be used to make weather predictions for the whole world, as well as more detailed predictions for specific regions like the Alps or the Mediterranean.
Short-range
GLORI aims at improving the quality of short-range forecasts up to one week. It therefore aims at forecasting imminent events and weather conditions, with a focus on high-impact events, like extreme precipitation and storms.
High-resolution
The digital twin can make very detailed weather predictions thanks to the use of a new generation of supercomputers such as Leonardo at CINECA, where the capability of ICON to run on hybrid GPU-CPU architectures is exploited.
Digital Twin
In the context of weather modelling, the digital twin is a simulation of the weather that is designed to be as realistic as possible. It provides the opportunity to make simulations on the specific scenario needed by the user for their application and includes other models in cascade and data which permits forecasting of impacts.

Partners website: MeteoSwisse e Deutscher Wetterdienst

Italy’s ItaliaMeteo Agency is part of a consortium led by CINECA exploring the interoperable capabilities provided by the Digital Twin Engine to connect the global Digital Twin Weather-Induced Extremes, both developed by ECMWF – European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts – in the European Commission’s Destination Earth initiative (DestinE), with a regional digital twin, GLORI DT (Global-to-Regional ICON Digital Twin). This extension offers a unique opportunity to test technology transfers and draft a project on the potential synergies between DestinE Digital Twins and other complementary national and regional initiatives.

In detail, the Agency is involved in Work Package 4 (Demonstration of platform compatibility), where it coordinates the evaluation activities of the results of the two Digital Twins simulation, the level of interoperability, and access to DestinE data management systems, analyzing the quality of the simulations obtained. The Agency is involved in Work Package 6 (Application cases with regional focus), where it coordinates the evaluation activities of the results for configuring the ICON model and setting up a NEMO model in the Mediterranean, analyzing the quality of the simulations obtained.

IT-WATER / High Performance Computation of Future Drought and Water Resources Scenarios in Italy – is a project funded in the framework of Piano Nazionale di Ripresa e Resilienza (PNRR) that aims to improve the performance of state-of-the-art models to produce information on the impacts of climate change on water resources by providing the first high-resolution scenarios of drought evolution in Italy, taking full advantage of the potential of high-performance computational tools (HPC).

The project, coordinated by the International Center in Environmental Monitoring – Cima Foundation with the support of Fadeout Software Srl and ItaliaMeteo Agency, will include pre-processing and bias correction of high-resolution climate change scenarios, adaptation of national hydrological models developed by CIMA Foundation for the HPC environment, runs of these models using past and future scenarios, and calculation of decision-oriented drought indicators.

By forming a consortium ranging from research institutes to small businesses and public organizations, addressing a key challenge for the future sustainability of Italy’s water resources, and doing so by improving existing operational models to work in an HPC environment, IT-WATER fully responds to SPOKE 4 Theme 4 on increasing the capacity of modeling chains to produce data and information on impacts in socio-economic sectors of relevance to Italy; this assessment will lead to the production of an open document and dataset that will include analysis of drought scenarios for the next 10 and 30 years for the entire national territory.  

The objective of the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) National Collaboration Programme (NCP) is to support Countries in developing capacity to enhance uptake of C3S core products and services, in response to specific national needs, with the goal to improve climate resilience. The NCP will support the capacity of authorities to deliver user-oriented climate services, support adaptation plans and promote climate change communication and public awareness.  

The main objectives of the Italian proposal for C3S NCP are the consolidation and improvement of the use of C3S products into operational workflows of national hydro-climate services, to be deployed, at the national and sub-national scale, to support actions and measures to adapt to climate change and to assess risks, and/or to increase climate resilience and sustainable uses of natural resources. 

The workflows considered are based on existing national/local operating systems and model suites, and they can rely on several national and local operating information systems and websites for the free exploitation and dissemination of the results. This guarantees the maintenance of C3S data-based products after the ending of the C3S NCP. 

This project explores the uptake of C3S products to cover the so-called “last-mile” delivering high-quality, robust, scientific-sounding, and high-resolution hydro-climate information across the country to primarily support institutional activities, as well as potential private users from, for instance, energy, water, agrometeorological, hydroelectric & insurance sectors.  

The project plans to consider four types of C3S products: GHG data, climate reanalyses, seasonal forecasts and climate projections, downscaled and tailored to the Italian territory, to derive products and indicators to support the seamless evaluation of water resources, heat waves and wildfires, in continuity with the operational assessments mainly based on in-situ observations and satellite data. 

The Italian team consists of ISPRA, the Italian Institute for Environmental Protection and Research, which is the prime Contractor leading the team, Aeronautica Militare with the Meteorological Service, representing Italy in the ECMWF Council, Agenzia ItaliaMeteo, the national Meteorological Civil Service, ENEA, the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development, the Consorzio Italiano per la Copernicus Academy, two Institutes of CNR, the Italian National Research Council, and the four Regional Environmental Protection Agency (ARPA) of Campania, Piedmont, Lombardia, and Aosta Valley. ARPAs will support the testing of the C3S-derived products at the local scale. Hence, each of them will act as “local tester” and “user testimonial”.

Agenzia ItaliaMeteo will perform a calibration of seasonal forecasts of near-surface temperature and precipitation based on quantile mapping of daily data. Furthermore, Agenzia ItaliaMeteo will perform a deep analysis of the new methodologies for downscaling climate projections based on statistical approaches, partially already applied at local scale, as well as algorithms based on machine learning.