The Federal Council appointed Christof Appenzeller as director of the Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology at its meeting on 7 September. Mr Appenzeller will take up his post on 1 January 2023, succeeding Peter Binder who will retire at the end of the year.
Mr Appenzeller has held various positions at MeteoSwiss since 1999. He has been a member of the Executive Board since 2014 and heads the Analysis and Forecasting division. In this role, he is responsible for the weather services and weather warnings in all Swiss language regions, the development and operation of the weather forecast model, and the climate service, including climate monitoring and climate scenarios for Switzerland.
Mr Appenzeller studied natural sciences (majoring in environmental physics) at ETH Zurich, then completed a PhD and a postdoctoral habilitation thesis. He worked at the University of Washington in Seattle and at the University of Bern. He has been a titular professor at ETH Zurich since 2012. He has many years of management experience and was instrumental in the strategic realignment of MeteoSwiss.
Mr Appenzeller represents MeteoSwiss in various national and international bodies, including the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather (ECMWF), as a member of the Swiss delegation to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), and in EUMETNET, a network of 31 European national meteorological services. He played a cardinal role in building up the Confederation’s National Centre for Climate Services (NCCS) and ETH Zurich’s Center for Climate Systems Modeling.
Mr Appenzeller will take over from Peter Binder, who will retire at the end of the year. He will take up his post on 1 January 2023. Federal Councillor Alain Berset thanks Peter Binder for his work as director of MeteoSwiss over the past nine years and for his great commitment to the further development of the Federal Office as a critical infrastructure for meteorological and climatological services.
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