Météo-France at the service of society

During 2019, the establishment continued its mission to provide the most accurate and timely forecasts and give warnings for the safety of property and people.

First of all, in terms of vigilance, 2019 has been an intense year. In close collaboration with the French Ministry of Health and Public Health, the establishment has, for example, drawn up a reference system for switching to heatwave red alert. An action plan has been drawn up for overseas territories to better link vigilance and cyclone warning.

2019 was also marked by major changes in operational digital forecasting chains with the switchover to new versions of models at the beginning of July, enabling an improvement in spatial resolutions over Western Europe of 25% to 33% with a very positive impact on forecasting scores.

Finally, in addition to improving the models, the consolidation of the observation system was continued.

Anticipating and responding to the needs of clients and customers is at the heart of the establishment's strategy. It is a question of responding by constantly adapting our services. A sense of adaptation and innovation, with the creation of new tools and services for its clients, has enabled the establishment to meet new needs.

At the beginning of 2019, an operational system for forecasting sargasso strandings in the West Indies was set up.

In association with various international partners, a warning centre for space weather phenomena, such as solar flares, and their potential impacts on aviation, has been launched as part of the Space Weather project.

On a commercial level, an innovative tool for forecasting renewable electricity production was inaugurated in conjunction with Atos. This system works with the help of machine learning and is aimed at professionals in the sector, producers and aggregators.

The new contract signed in June with Sanef to provide meteorological assistance for its motorway network, the third longest in France, is a perfect illustration of this. This agreement provides for personalised expertise, strongly involving the consultant forecasters of the Interregional Directorate North (DIRN).

In terms of "winter service", 80 departments, representing nearly 320,000 kilometres of departmental roads, have chosen Météo-France to help them anticipate and adapt their operational response to snow and ice conditions as accurately as possible.

In 2019, Météo-France consolidated its links with many strategic partners: agreements with the Armed Forces Staff, the Directorate General for Armaments, the Caisse Centrale de Réassurance (CCR - Central Reinsurance Fund), and the Institut de Radioprotection et de Sûreté Nucléaire (IRSN - Institute of Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety) were thus renewed. The agreement signed with the General Directorate for Civil Security and Crisis Management of the Ministry of the Interior has made it possible to strengthen preventive actions in terms of the safety of property and people. The participation of Météo-France experts in the Operational Centre for Inter-ministerial Crisis Management (Cogic) has also been strengthened at the national level, as well as locally.

At the international level, the establishment has continued its commitments with the IPCC, WMO and CEP, as well as towards certain countries with aid for the development of meteorological services for agriculture in Burkina Faso, which started in 2019, and the selection of Météo-France to ensure the twinning with Algeria in the company of our Finnish colleagues.

2019 was a year marked by climate issues. The two heat wave episodes in June and July are emblematic examples. The work carried out by Météo-France has shown that the probability of occurrence of such heat waves is almost nil without human-induced climate change.

The National Meteorological Research Centre has been at the forefront of climate research, with notable participation in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Ocean and Cryosphere and the hosting of the IPCC Working Group 1 in Toulouse at the end of summer.

Forecasts, services, climate simulations … all this cannot be done without intensive calculations. Improving the quality of the models produced by Météo-France, both for digital forecasting and climate simulation, is only possible at the cost of ever-increasing computing power. In 2019, the establishment chose Bull's proposal to renew its supercomputer, multiplying its power fivefold. The first delivery of components for the supercomputer, Belenos, took place in November 2019 and is scheduled to enter operational service in autumn 2020.