The month of May will be a busy time for the CONFESS consortium who will be presenting at a number of prestigious international events. The end of May is when EGU will hold their Annual General Assembly meeting, which is the same week as the ESA-Living Planet Symposium. These events will see our consortium members travelling to Vienna, where A. Alessanndri (CNR-ISAC) will host a session at EGU where five presentations related to CONFESS will be given. A strong representation will also be in Bonn to present the work of CONFESS at the European Space Agency’s 2022 Living Planet Symposium, which is held every three years. This is an exiting time for the project as we are eager to share our results with the community who can benefit from our findings as well as feedback on our project achievements. These and future presentations over the summer of 2022 are listed in our presentation page.
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CONFESS General Assembly
CONFESS hosted its first public General Assembly online on the Wednesday, 1st December 2021 from 09:00 UK Time.
Over 70 participants from Europe and beyond heard about the objectives and progress of the project.
Presentations from the meeting are available below.
9:00 – 9:40 Welcome and Introduction to the GA
Time | Presenter | Presentation |
9:00-9:10 | Jean-Noel Thepaut (Director of Copernicus department at ECMWF) | Welcome |
9:00-9:20 | Magdalena A. Balmaseda (Project Leader) | Introduction to the GA and practicalities |
9:20-10:20 CONFESS in the Copernicus Context
Time | Presenter | Presentation |
9:20-9:50 | Hans Hersbach (ECMWF, invited) | C3S Earth System Reanalyses: progress and planned evolution |
9:50-10:20 | Antje Innes (ECMWF, invited) | Updates to CAMS reanalyses activities and synergies with climate |
10:30 – 12:00 WP1: Continental Surfaces Impact (soil & vegetation, land-use)
Time | Presenter | Presentation |
10:30-10:45 | Constantin Ardilouze (Meteo France) | Overview of progress in WP1 |
10:45-11:00 | Souhail Boussetta (ECMWF) | Task 1.1 Harmonization of Copernicus observational records with focus on vegetation |
11:00-11:15 | Andrea Alessandri (CNR) | Task 1.2. Implementation in HTESSEL/SURFEX to assess interannual variability |
11:15-11:30 | Gildas Dayon (MeteoFrance) | Task 1.3: Sensitivity of land surface conditions to dynamic vegetation |
11:30-11:40 | Andrea Alessandri (CNR) | Outreach and dissemination. Links to other international projects |
11:40-12:00 | Questions and discussion |
13:00 – 14:15 WP2 Aerosols in Troposphere and Stratosphere
Time | Presenter | Presentation |
13:00-13:15 | Roberto Bilbao (BSC) | Overview of Progress in WP2 |
13:15-13:30 | Tim Stockdale (ECMWF) | Task 2.1 Harmonization of CMIP6 and C3S/CAMS data with IFS (decadal variations) |
13:30-13:45 | Angela Benedetti (ECMWF) | Task 2.2. Capability to react to hazardous events: Biomass burning. PART A: Experimental set up and Biomass Climatology |
13:45-14:00 | Etienne Tourigny (BSC) | Task 2.2 Capability to react to hazardous events: Biomass burning. PART B: Empirical model for biomass burning emissions |
14:00-14:15 | Tim Stockdale (ECMWF) | Task 2.3 Capability to react to volcanic eruptions events |
14:15-14:30 | Questions/Discussion | |
14:30-15:00 | Joao Teixeira (UK MetOffice, Invited) | Coupling fire with vegetation in the UK MetOffice Earth System Model |
15:15-15:45 | Julia Green (University of Berkeley, Invited) | Regional atmosphere-terrestrial biosphere feedbacks |
15:45-16:15 WP3 Integration and testing in initialised forecast and multi-year integration and Final Discussion
Time | Presenter | Presentation |
15:45-16:00 | Lauriane Batte (Meteo France) | Overview and progress: Experimental protocol |
16:00-16:15 | Final discussion | |
16:15 | Closure |
CONFESS – 9 months in
CONFESS has completed its first nine months of its planned activities, resulting in 7 deliverables, of which 8 are publicly available.
CONFESS partners are busy preparing first data sets in the form of harmonized CAMS and CMIP6 datasets for aerosols that are due to be published in October 2021.
Regular meetings are taking place both within the consortium as well as with stakeholders from the Copernicus Climate Change Service to ensure the results of the project will add value,
If you want to learn more about the project, please do not hesitate to contact us.
1st Set of Deliverables published
The first set of deliverables have been published on the website. These include:
- D4.2 Project Website
- D4.3 Dissemination and Exploitation Plan
- D4.4 Media and Communication Plan
All deliverables can be downloaded from the results pages here.
First deliverable submitted
The first deliverable has officially been submitted to the EU. D4.1 Risk and Quality Management Plan sets out the baseline of internal quality management including the identification of Key Performance Indicators and related metrics that will help the project to measure its progress.

CONFESS Project Kicked Off
The CONFESS project has officially started on the 1st of November 2020. Led by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts and with Partners Meteo-France, Barcelona Supercomputing Centre and the Italian National Research Council, the project will run for 36 months with the aim to improve the reliability and usability of Copernicus Climate Change Service information in the land-atmosphere coupled system by exploiting new and improved Earth Observations data records of land-use, vegetation states and surface-emitted aerosols delivered across different Copernicus Services.
The project had its virtual Kick-off meeting on the 3rd and 4th of November, bringing together both members of the consortium as well as stakeholders and advisers. The meeting focused on planning the work for the first year of the project.
