On 10 March 2022, the Steering Committee, the highest-level governing body of the COSMO Consortium, approved CIMA Research Foundation’s participation in the Consortium.
The COSMO Consortium (COnsortium for Small-scale MOdelling) was formed in 1998 with the overall goal of developing, improving and maintaining a limited-area atmospheric model, the COSMO model, used for both operational and research applications by the Consortium members and other authorized institutes. Another more efficient meteorological model (ICON) has been developed within the Consortium and it will replace the COSMO model in the near future.
Massimo Milelli, our head for Meteorology and Climate Department is the coordinator of one of the eight working groups (WG). In fact, COSMO research and development work is distributed among eight groups, specialised in different areas. Since 2012, Dr. Milelli is the coordinator of WG6 “Reference Version and Implementation“, which deals with website, documentation/reporting, quality control, model versioning and user support. The coordinators of the Working Groups are also part of the Scientific Committee of the Consortium.
CIMA Research Foundation contribution is also extended to the Priority Project CITTÁ, which aims to include in the ICON weather model an urban parameterization: in other words, the project tries to improve the forecasting capability in big cities, where there is a different microclimate compared to the surrounding rural areas.
CIMA Foundation joins the other Italian partners: the National Meteorological Service of the Italian Air Force, Arpa Emilia Romagna. Arpa Piemonte, CMCC and CIRA.