EUMETNET

EUMETNET is delighted to announce the launch of strategic and operational cooperation with the National Environmental Agency (NEA) of Georgia. This significant step was formalised with the signing of a cooperation agreement on 1 July 2025. The inclusion of the NEA of Georgia marks an important milestone in EUMETNET’s commitment to strengthening pan-European and regional collaboration in meteorology, hydrology, and environmental monitoring. The NEA will actively participate in several EUMETNET Programmes and Modules, contributing valuable expertise and regional insights. This partnership is expected to bring mutual benefits, enhancing the capabilities of both parties through knowledge exchange, coordinated observations, and shared technological innovations. By joining EUMETNET’s collaborative framework, the NEA of Georgia takes a significant step forward in its efforts to advance national and international environmental monitoring and forecasting services. The 17th EUMETNET Assembly meeting took place in Reading, at ECMWF on Tuesday 29th and Wednesday 30th November. 28 members were present as were Observers from the NMSs of Romania and Turkey, ECMWF and WMO. Not able to attend were the NMSs of HMS The Fyrom, IHMS, LEGMC and EUMETSAT. The 10th Joint STAC&PFAC meeting and the 13th STAC and PFAC meetings took place in Lisbon, by kind invitation of IPMA. utoPollen programme participants come from 25 institutes and associations from 22 countries that are either EUMETNET members or cooperating third parties. An extensive list of participants, as well as a list of publications and links to projects and networks across Europe, can be found on the AutoPollen website along with relevant data. Furthermore, the AutoPollen programme collaborates with several European-level projects and organisations, including: Horizon Europe Project SYLVA (A SYstem for ReaL-Time ObserVation of Aeroallergens), Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Services (CAMS), the COST Action ADOPT (New Approaches in Detection of Pathogens and Aeroallergens – CA18226), EURAMET on the BioAirMet project, and Working Group 39 of the European Normalisation Committee (CEN - Technical Committee 264). The benchmark is a key deliverable of the EUMETNET Post-Processing module, designed to provide high-quality benchmark datasets and infrastructures for comparing the various methods used to post-process forecasts in National Meteorological Services. The benchmark is composed of two components: gridded post-processing, which requires gridded observations, forecasts, and reforecasts; and station-based post-processing, which requires station observations and forecasts and reforecasts at the nearest point. The benchmark dataset consists of 47 fields, with at least seven requiring post-processing. It includes daily forecasts at midnight, which feature ensemble, control, and high-resolution ECMWF runs, as well as reforecasts twice a week and hourly analysis data. The training set covers 2017 and 2018, while the test set is for 2019. The total size of the gridded benchmark is about 6 terabytes (TB), with the training set being 4.3 TB and the test set 1.6 TB. This dataset provides a solid basis for evaluating and comparing different post-processing methods used by National Meteorological Services. EUPPBench datasets In addition to the base dataset, specific datasets for statistical and machine learning over a smaller domain have been designed. The EUPPBench datasets are available over a smaller area within Europe, stored in Zarr format for easy access. The forecasts and observations datasets are already paired together, providing analysis-ready data for post-processing benchmarking purposes. The EUPPBench datasets also include station data all over the selected domain and ECMWF forecasts and reforecasts from the nearest grid point. With these datasets, the first benchmark of several post-processing methods was conducted and published in Earth System Science Data (ESSD) . More det