Partner 10: SMC

The Servei Meteorològic de Catalunya (SMC, Meteorological Service of Catalonia) has as main functions to programme, implement and manage a system to forecast and follow-up meteorological phenomena, and to emit meteorological warnings for Civil Protection and the follow-up of meteorological situations of risk.
To carry out a correct surveillance of weather, many elements for observations are available in SMC. The main ones are: i) around 180 automatic weather stations, which provide real-time information; ii) four meteorological radars; iii) radiosounding in Barcelona; iv) four lightning detectors; v) four oceanographic bouys in the Mediterranean sea. On the other hand, SMC is running twice every day three numerical weather prediction mesoscale models (MM5, WRF and MASS) and one oceanographic model (WAM) to forecast, respectively, weather in Southern Europe and Catalonia and the state of sea in Western Mediterranean area.
As it is said before, SMC emits meteorological warnings for Civil Protection and carries out the follow-up of meteorological situations of risk. Heavy rain events are responsibles of the most of these situations in the Mediterranean (with flash floods and debris events), and SMC will provide its data and its infrastructure to improve knowledge and forecasting of these events. Besides, SMC is also member of Xarxa de Riscos Naturals (Thematic Network of Natural Hazards), a network set up in 2002 with the aim of pooling and coordinating resources of research groups from Catalonia working on hydrometeorological and geological phenomena.

Eliseu Vilaclara (born in 1960) studied Physics in the University of Barcelona, and he is now the Head of the Area of Forecasting in the Meteorological Service of Catalonia (SMC). He is mainly in charge of the Remote Sensing Unit (working basically with the radar network and the lightning detection network of Catalonia) and the Forecasting and Surveillance Unit. He has collaborated in MEDEX project (MEDiterranean EXperiment on “Cyclones that produce high impact weather in the Mediterranean”).

Dr. Tomeu Rigo (born in 1975) studied Physics in the University of Illes Balears, and he obtained in 2004 the PhD. Degree in Physics in the University of Barcelona. He is now technician in the Remote Sensing Unit of the SMC, working in the development of different meteorological products from the radar network of Catalonia. He has participated in several international projects, as Optimisation des outils de prévision hydrométéorologiques – HYDROPTIMET (Interreg IIIB MEDOCC, 2002-2004) or Application des méthodologies de prévisions hydrométéorologiques orientées aux risques environnementeaux – AMPHORE (Interreg IIIB MEDOCC, 2004-2006).

Josep R. Miró (born in 1975) studied Mathematics in the Autonomous University of Barcelona, and he is working on data assimilation in the NWP models and the development of different nowcasting techniques in the Area of Applied Research and Numerical Modelling in the SMC. He has also collaborated in COST Action 731 (Propagation of uncertainty in advanced meteo-hydrological forecast systems).

Selected Publications
2007.    Martín, A., R. Romero, A. De Luque, S. Alonso, T. Rigo, and M. C. Llasat, 2007: Sensitivities of a Flash Flood Event over Catalonia: A Numerical Analysis. Monthly Weather Review, 135, 651-669.
2007.    Pineda, N., T. Rigo, J. Bech, and X. Soler, 2007: Lightning and precipitation relationship in summer thunderstorms: Case studies in the North Western Mediterranean region. Atmospheric Research, 85, 159-170.
2006.    Miró, J., A. Sairouni, and J. Bech, 2006: Impact of non-corrected and corrected radar data assimilation in RH analysis and QPF. In: Proceedings of Fourth European Conference on Radar in Meteorology and Hydrology, Barcelona (Spain), ERAD, P9.10.
2005.    Rigo, T., J. Bech, N. Pineda, J. Miró, and A. Sairouni, 2005: Combining Lightning and Radar data to improve the nowcasting of summer thunderstorms. In: Proceedings of WWRP Symposium on Nowcasting and Very Short Range Forecasting, Toulouse (France), 141.
2004.    Cucurull, L., F. Vandenberghe, D. Barker, E. Vilaclara, and A. Rius, 2004: Three-Dimensional Variational Data Assimilation of Ground-Based GPS ZTD and Meteorological Observations during the 14 December 2001 Storm Event over the Western Mediterranean Sea. Monthly Weather Review, 132, 749-763.