The GMES Atmosphere Service Workshop was held on 6 and 7 December at the Belgian Academy Palace in Brussels. The workshop was attended by over 100 participants from 27 countries, several European Commission Directorates General (Environment, Joint Research Centre, Research, Transport and Energy, Enterprise and Industry), European agencies and organisations, such as ECMWF, EEA, ESA, EUMETSAT, as well as key projects funded through European Commission 6th Framework Programme and ESA GMES Service Element activities (GMES and PROMOTE).
The workshop was organised as part of the follow up from the GMES Advisory Council (GAC) request to launch a GMES atmosphere-related service.
The workshop presentations and discussions focused on three main items:
* Users, objectives and requirements
* Implementation issues
*Conditions for sustainability
The workshop was structured in three parallel sessions around different user streams:
´Air Quality’,
‘Climate Change/forcing’ and
‘O3/UV/Renewable energies’.
To support these discussions, an orientation document was circulated to the participants prior to the workshop.
Following introductory presentations from Directors P Weissenberg and T. Makela, the plenary session continued with overview presentations on the three main items for discussion. A final presentation from the Head of the GMES Bureau, V. Moutarlier provided an overview of the structure of GMES and the implementation process.
The workshop brought numerous communities together and identified some important cross-cutting issues. Outcomes from the workshop are in general in agreement with the focus of the orientation paper, however with some subtle but important changes with regard to scope and priorities. Sustainability was acknowledged to be strongly compromised by gaps in space data coverage from 2010 to 2020 and in-situ data issues. Continued involvement of users in the implementation process was seen as key.
The main conclusions of the workshop will be reported as input to the GAC meeting scheduled February 14th, 2007. Based on the workshop report and orientation paper, the GMES Bureau will request the GAC to endorse the start of the implementation process for a GMES Atmosphere Service Pilot.
(Source GMES.Info)