The Agencia Estatal de Meteorología, AEMET, is the State Agency under the Spanish Ministry of Environment responsible for the official activities related to meteorology and climatology in Spain, including weather information for general purposes. AEMET retains exclusive responsibility for the main meteorological infrastructure in the whole territory of Spain, international exchange, aviation and maritime services as well as the meteorological support to Defence. The total staff is over 1.400; about 600 out of them have University master degrees.
The direction and most of the general management activities, as well as most of the technical departments, are located at the AEMET headquarters in Madrid. A President distributes the technical activities under three main Directions: Infrastructure & Production (Production Dpt., Infrastructures Dpt., Development and Applications Dpt.), Human Resources and Strategy and Commercial activities.
AEMET is the representative of Spain at four international organizations: WMO, ECMWF, EUMETSAT and GEO, and it is member of several international groups of cooperation: EUMETNET, HIRLAM, etc. It is the operator or leader of international operational programmes such as the Nowcasting SAF (EUMETSAT), the GAW (WMO) atmospheric station at Izaña, (Tenerife, Canary Islands), the WMO Regional BREWER Calibration Centre for Europe (RBCCE) and the Northern Africa – Middle East – Europe node of the Sand and Dust Storms Warning and Assessment System (SDS – WAS) of WMO.
The main research activities at AEMET cover numerical weather prediction, severe weather events, remote sensing, climate (including climate modelling and climate change scenarios) and atmospheric composition. AEMET leads co-operative R+D projects such as MedCOF, a Mediterranean initiative on climate, or the SRNWP EPS programme of EUMETNET and has significant participation in others such as HYMEX and a number of COST actions. It has been involved on many European FP7 projects some of them on going such as MACC-II, MyWave, EUPORIAS or MUSICA.
Key personnel
Jose A. Garcia-Moya (male)
Head of the Innovation Area. He joined AEMET (formerly INM) in 1980. He is BSc in Physics and MSc in Atmospheric Physics and Geophysics. He was AEMET Head of Research in 2010-2011. His areas of expertise include the Predictability and Ensemble Prediction Systems, Numerical Weather Prediction (Convection parametrization schemes) and objective verification of numerical models. He has several publications in peer-review international magazines. He has participated in several international projects like HIRLAM, PYREX, TOUGH, MULTIMETEO, MULTIMETEO XXI, HONEYMOON.
Ernesto Rodriguez-Camino (male)
Head of Climate Evaluation and Modelling Division at AEMET, responsible for research on issues related with classical climatology and climate modelling. Seasonal forecasting and generation of downscaled climate change projections over Spain -feeding a wide variety of impact and adaptation studies- are two of the main operational responsibilities of this division. He has long experience in atmospheric modelling and has also participated in many national and international projects in connexion with modelling and currently with climate services (e.g., EUPORIAS, MOSES). He was deputy project leader of the HIRLAM project for the development of an operational limited area model for short-term forecasting. He has recently participated in the shaping of European Met Services’ plans for climate services in the frame of the WMO’s Global Framework for Climate Services. He is currently co-chair of the WMO RAVI Working Group on Climate and Hydrology. He is also responsible for the coordination of the WMO MedCOF initiative on operational seasonal prediction for the Mediterranean region.
María Jesús Casado Calle (female)
MSc in Fundamental Physics. Responsible for the generation of downscaled climate change projections over Spain. Long experience in climate models evaluation, circulation type classifications and climate variability and has participated in different national and international projects related with these issues like COST-VALUE, MOSES.
