The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) will host the second high-level session of the Open Consultative Platform (OCP-HL-2) on May 26 and 27. The event aims to build on OCP’s key aim, and its slogan: ‘Partnerships and Innovation for the Next Generation of Weather and Climate Intelligence.’
The event will be held as two 90-minute virtual sessions and will discuss progress made in the key areas identified at the first OCP high-level session, which was held during the 18th World Meteorological Congress in June 2019.
The five key areas identified at the first OCP session were data and more shared data, forecasting and forecasters, demand and supply of services to drive informed decision-making, bridging the capacity gap, and evolving roles, responsibilities and partnerships for common actions.
OCP-HL-2 will be hosted by the WMO Secretary-General, professor Petteri Taalas, and the President of the WMO, professor Gerhard Adrian, and moderated by the USA’s Erica Grow and Ireland’s Gerald Fleming.
Day one (May 26) will see the launch of the first OCP whitepaper on the Future of Weather and Climate Forecasting. Invited speakers include Dr Gilbert Brunet, chair of the WMO Scientific Advisory Panel (SAP) and chief scientist at Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology; Dr Florence Rabier, director-general of ECMWF; and Dr Kevin Petty, director of Science and Forecast Operations and PPP at The Weather Company, an IBM Business.
Day two (May 27) will look at the evolving roles and responsibilities of national meteorological and hydrological services. Invited speakers include Marianne Thyrring, permanent representative of Denmark with WMO; professor Bako Mansur Matazu, permanent representative of Nigeria with WMO; and Naoyuki Hasegawa, permanent representative of Japan with WMO.
A high-level panel with up to 15 invited participants will follow after presentations to delve further into the themes, aiming to formulate key messages for the way forward. The outcome of the session will be published as an OCP-HL-2 summary shortly after the event.
The OCP is organized by the WMO’s multi-stakeholder Public-Private Engagement (PPE) workstream, which aims to drive awareness building and improved cooperation among the public, private and academic sectors.
The OCP’s role is to streamline a high-level dialogue for public, private and academic collaboration that will facilitate the development of a new generation of weather and climate intelligence to counter global risks.
Dimitar Ivanov, director of PPE at the WMO, said, “OCP is fostering cross-sectoral and transdisciplinary approaches in addressing collaboratively the grand challenges facing the weather and climate enterprise. The two themes selected for the OCP-HL-2 present major evolutionary developments in the enterprise. They link the expected significant progress in the ability to forecast seamlessly and precisely the weather and climate, with the needed institutional changes that will enable to fully harness the related socio-economic benefits.
“Participants at OCP-HL-2 will have the chance to listen to discussions among leading experts, scientists and officials from public, private and academic sectors, on key developments shaping the future of the enterprise,” he added.
For more information on the event, click here.
Notes for participants:
Invited speakers and panelists for OCP-HL-2 will join via a Zoom platform and will form two panels for each one of the themes. Moderated panel discussions will be streamed live on Swapcard for all those who register for participation. Participants will also be encouraged to ask questions during the sessions – some of which will be passed to moderators to be used in the panel discussions. All received questions/comments will be processed after the sessions in the preparation of the Session Summary Report with key messages.
