National Meteorological and Hydrological Services
Box 3.2 How Switzerland Supports the Global Climate Observing System Following the Swiss Parliament’s ratification of the Kyoto Protocol in 2003, national coordination of the activities of the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) was intensified, leading to the establishment of the Swiss GCOS Office at the Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology (MeteoSwiss) in 2006.a Today, the Swiss GCOS Office is responsible for coordinating all climate-relevant measurements in Switzerland made by various institutions. In close collaboration with universities, federal offices, private institutions, and research institutes— and advised by a steering committee of policy makers and scientists—the Swiss GCOS Office has recently compiled an inventory of key climate measurement time series in Switzerland (Seiz and Foppa 2007). Thanks to this agencywide cooperation, analyzing potential discontinuities in observation networks and assisting partners in the long-term planning of systematic climate observation are possible. To sustain and foster the dialogue, a GCOS roundtable is organized once a year to discuss ongoing projects and activities. In doing so, the Swiss GCOS Office facilitates the information exchange between various institutions in Switzerland and acts as an interface between providers and users of climate-related data. Given the need to design national adaptation strategies in response to climate variability and change, the experience gained from these coordination mechanisms will help in implementing national service delivery strategies for climate services as part of the Global Framework for Climate Services.b a. See the Swiss GCOS website at http://www.gcos.ch. b. See the WMO website at http://www.wmo.int/pages/gfcs/index_en.php.
meteorological analyses and forecasting products in the most cost-effective way. Global NWPs products are generated at a few specialized centers, which have the computing power and technical staff to run these models. In many centers, these models now run at such high spatial resolution (better than 15 kilometers horizontal resolution) that they can be used directly by NMHSs in their own forecast production systems. Alternatively, they are used to provide inputs for limited area models, which assimilate local data that are unavailable to the global system, to provide more precisely tailored forecasts usually on short time-scales. The GDPFS o perates through the world meteorological centers (WMCs); see box 3.4 technical insight), regional and specialized meteorological centers10 (see box 3.5 technical insight), and national meteorological centers (NMCs).
The Special Role of NMHSs At the national level, the key players are the NMHSs, which have a fourfold mission (Zillman 2003a): • Observing and monitoring the state of the atmosphere, ocean, and inland waters • Conducting research aimed at understanding, modeling, and predicting the behavior of atmospheric and related processes and phenomena Weather and Climate Resilience • http://dx.doi.org/10.1596/978-1-4648-0026-9
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