Regional Office for Europe remains committed to collaboration for humanitarian purposes in Europe

Following the strategic objectives of the World Meteorological Organization related to establishments and maintaining of the Multi-Hazard Early Warning Systems (MHEWS) in its Member states, WMO together with its partners and Members is active in designing, upgrading and/or making of operational MHEWS systems. This global activity is supported through the implementation of the Global Multi-hazard Alert System (GMAS) as a WMO mechanism that will provide authoritative warnings and advice to all WMO Members and the global audience to enhance disaster preparedness and improve disaster response decision-making.

This kind of activities are stipulated in the Memorandum of Understanding concerning the framework and arrangements for cooperation between the World Meteorological Organization and the European Commission signed in 2003, and the Working Arrangements concerning the framework and arrangements for cooperation between the European Commission and the World Meteorological Organization, signed in 2020.

The Working arrangements stipulates as one of the areas of cooperation in its Part B.2 Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR), Emergency Response and Humanitarian Assistance. Under this framework the collaboration between the World Meteorological Organization and the European Commission is envisaged in provision of support to emergency response for disasters triggered by natural and man-made hazards and to associated humanitarian activities.

In this respect WMO and its Regional Office for Europe remains committed to this particular collaboration in case of support for humanitarian purposes in Europe.

The products co-developed under the WMO project South-East European Multi-Hazard Early Warning Advisory System (SEE-MHEWS Initiative in which Ukraine was taking active part) jointly with the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) will be made available as numerical weather prediction data to support activities of the humanitarian agencies in Ukraine and border areas under the EU-funded programme 'Prevention, Preparedness and Response to natural and man-made disasters in Eastern Partnership countries’.

At the same time, as part of the ECMWF Council agreed policy, ECMWF real-time products can also be provided, as part of its support to European Commission and its agencies, free of charge for non-commercial use. Furthermore, ECMWF has already agreed the support of the Ukrainian Hydrometeorological Service during the current emergency situation. 

The project team will liaise directly with the relevant EU project people to organize practical arrangement for the implementation of this data provision.