In May 2013, the Earth System Science and Environmental Management (ESSEM) COST Action ES1206 "Advanced Global Navigation Satellite Systems tropospheric products for monitoring severe weather events and climate (GNSS4SWEC)" was officially started. The Action will run until May 2017. As stated in its title, the Action focuses on improving the GNSS contribution to the monitoring of severe weather and climate. It is organised in three Working Groups (WG):

• WG1: "Advanced GNSS processing techniques"
• WG2: "Use of GNSS tropospheric products for high-resolution, rapid-update NWP and severe weather forecasting"
• WG3: "Use of GNSS tropospheric products for climate monitoring"

ROB has actively taken part in the establishment of this new COST Action and co-chair WG2.

Official GNSS4SWEC website

For more details on the Action, please visit the COST website here or the official COST ES1206 (GNSS4SWEC) website here.

Memorandum of Understanding (MoU)

Click here to download the COST Action ES1206 (GNSS4SWEC) Memorundum of Understanding

COST Action Summary (Extract from MoU)

Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) have revolutionised positioning, navigation, and timing, becoming a common part of our everyday life. Aside from these well-known civilian and commercial applications, GNSS is now an established atmospheric observing system which can accurately sense water vapour, the most abundant greenhouse gas, accounting for 60-70% of atmospheric warming. Severe weather forecasting is challenging, in part due to the high temporal and spatial variation of atmospheric water vapour. Water vapour is under-sampled in the current meteorological and climate observing systems, obtaining and exploiting more high-quality humidity observations is essential to weather forecasting and climate monitoring.

This Action will address new and improved capabilities from concurrent developments in both the GNSS and meteorological communities. For the first time, the synergy of the three GNSS systems (GPS, GLONASS and Galileo) will be used to develop new, advanced tropospheric products, exploiting the full potential of multi-GNSS water vapour estimates on a wide range of temporal and spatial scales, from real-time monitoring and forecasting of severe weather, to climate research.

In addition the action will promote the use of meteorological data in GNSS positioning, navigation, and timing services.

The Action will stimulate knowledge transfer and data sharing throughout Europe.