Florian Pappenberger

Director of Forecasts
Forecast Department

Summary:

Florian Pappenberger is Deputy Director-General and leads the Forecast Department at the European Centre For Medium-Range Weather Forecasts. The Forecast Department at ECMWF has a strong customer focus. He is responsible for the 24/7 production of weather forecasts, forecast quality control (verification and diagnostics), development of novel forecast products, applications of weather forecasts such as flood, drought, fire and health forecasts, numerical weather prediction relevant software development, data sales and outreach and training. He has led the migration of the operational forecasts to a new HPC centre, the establishment of the European Weather Cloud and is responsible for the Machine Learning activities at ECMWF. 

 

Florian has a background in the forecasting of weather driven natural hazards including floods, droughts, windstorms, forest fires and impacts on human health. He has over 10 years of expertise in operational probabilistic forecasting, extreme value statistics and numerical model system development at ECMWF.  Florian is the author of over 250 scientific publications and has won several scientific awards. He is a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Meteorological Society and a member of several other professional bodies including HEPEX, British Hydrological Society, EGU, AGU, EMS, AMS. He served on the editorial board of several international journals and regularly advises on international committees including WMO, WHO and World Bank.

Professional interests:
  • Early warning systems and Disaster Risk Reduction 
  • Numerical Weather Predictions
  • Cloud Computing
  • Artificial Intelligence and Big Data
  • Uncertainty/Sensitivity analysis and cascading of uncertainty/sensitivity 
  • Statistical post- and pre-processing 
  • Increasing the usage and usefulness of ensemble forecasts
Career background:

Education

PhD, Lancaster University, UK (awarded 2004). Thesis: “Uncertainty in flood inundation modelling”. Supervisor: Prof Keith Beven

MSc, Lancaster University, UK (awarded 2000 with distinction). Dissertation: “Uncertainty in flood inundation modeling on the River Morava (Czech Republic)”. Supervisor: Prof Keith Beven

Professional Experience

Check: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/florian-pappenberger
External recognitions

Awards and Fellowships

  • 2015 Runner up, Harry Otten Prize for Innovation in Meteorology for "A global approach to predicting flash floods" (details, abstract)
  • 2012 IES Excellence Award 2011 for "Support to EU Policy", awarded to the EFAS team
  • 2011 Arne Richter Award for Outstanding Young Scientists (EGU)

Other

  • Member of the WMO Systematic Observation Financing Facility advisory board, 2022 - today
  • Technical Review Committee of the African Risk Capacity (ARC), a Specialized Agency of the African Union, 2022 - 2024
  • EU Climate Pact Ambassadors, 2022 - today
  • Member of the High Impact Weather project of World Weather Research Programme of WMO, 2021 - today
  • Support of Task Team Priority Weather Research Observations and Data Assimilation, US, 8th/9th  July 2021
  • Member of the Climate Change and Biodiversity of the Global Partnership on AI (GPAI) Committee, 2021 - today
  • Member of the SEE-MHEWS-A Project Steering Committee (WMO), 2019 - today
  • Member of the Atmospheric River Reconnaissance Steering Committee & Modelling Partner (2019 – today)
  • Member of the Expertengremium Nationale Forschungsdateninfrastruktur, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (2019-2028)
  • NCAR RAL Advisory Board (2017-2020)
  • Mitglieder des Expertengremiums National Research Data Infrastructure (2019 - )