NATIONAL OBSERVATORY OF ATHENS
EN GR
Contact Job Positions
OPERATIONAL SERVICES

UNIT FOR THE FORECASTING & MONITORING OF WEATHER RELATED NATURAL DISASTERS (METEO)

The METEO/NOA unit produces and provides operationally a wealth of data and information, by operating:

  • the densest network of automatic meteorological stations in Greece (420, December 2019),
  • high-resolution operational weather forecasting systems (waves, ultraviolet radiation, transport, thunderstorms, etc.), not only for Greece but also for Europe,
  • a system for weather-related satellite-based products (rain probability, clouds’ height and thickness, thunderstorms’ monitoring, etc.),
  • Crowdsourcing systems for the reporting of severe weather phenomena,
  • Early warning systems for severe weather events including fire weather conditions, which affect the ignition and spread of wildfires,
  • Databases for the systematic recording of weather-related natural disasters, impact analysis and vulnerability.

DISARM/IRIS

Integrated observatory and early warning system aiming to assist interested authorities in better preventing, addressing and mitigating the adverse impacts of wildland fires,  which include:

  • Forest fire risk assessment
  • A platfrom for satellite detection and monitoring of fires.
  • A rapid response system for fire spread forecasting – IRIS

DUST

A service for operational forecasting of the transport of African Dust. METEO/NOA is today the only Greek provider of relevant forecasts to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Sand and Dusta Storm Warning Advisory and Assessment System.

TALOS

Lightning monitoring and forecasting service at European-level. NOA operates,  since 2005, ZEUS lightnings detection system, which, combined with ‘TALOS’ – a lightning forecasting system, makes NOA as one of the very few European Centers that provides full coverage (monitoring and forecasting) of lightning activity.

More information can be found in https://www.meteo.gr, https://www.meteo.gr/talos  and http://map.disarmfire.eu

Computing Facilities

A computing center with infrastructure for operational weather forecasting that includes:

  • 508 CPU-core (2.4TB RAM) Linux cluster for the operational execution of weather forecast models
  • 28 CPU-core (256GB RAM) Linux server
  • 2x 16 CPU-core (24GB RAM) Linux server  for receiving and archiving the data from the network of the automated surface stations
  • 8  CPU-core (16GB RAM) Linux server
  • 1 server Windows for receiving and archiving METEOSAT satellite data
  • 1 server Linux for processing and archiving METEO data
  • 3 windows servers supporting the web page www.meteo.gr

Researchers involved