The European Meteorological Network (EUMETNET) is the Interest Grouping of the European meteorological services. EUMETNET coordinates the cooperation between the national meteorological services and promotes the exchange of knowledge and experience.
Well-coordinated cooperation between the national meteorological services increases the effectiveness and efficiency of global and regional monitoring systems and allows the methods employed in weather and climate forecasting to be further developed. The exchange of knowledge, experience and technology has a central role to play in this regard. These factors help to ensure that the individual meteorological services fulfil their national responsibilities in a cost-effective way and to a high standard.
In 1995, the Informal Conference of European Meteorological Services was founded with the purpose of increasing the level of cooperation between the national meteorological services. The Informal Conference was transformed into a legal entity in 2009, in the form of an Economic Interest Grouping. Switzerland is one of the founding members of the resulting European Meteorological Network (EUMETNET), which is based in Brussels.Currently 31 national meteorological services are members of EUMETNET.
Through EUMETNET, the meteorological services invest in joint programmes - a large proportion of which relate to meteorological monitoring. Examples of these include:
As part of the EMMA (European Multi-services Meteorological Awareness) programme, EUMETNET is developing the "meteoalarm" forecasting platform. This provides crucial information to enable people in Europe to prepare for extreme weather occurrences.
In the field of climatology, the goal of EUMETNET is the creation of a sustainable, Europe-wide data infrastructure (e.g. common database). Its aim is to facilitate access to, and distribution of, climatological data.