COSMO stands for COnsortium for Small-scale MOdelling. The general goal of COSMO is to develop, improve and maintain a non-hydrostatic limited-area atmospheric model, the COSMO model, which is used both for operational and for research applications by the members of the consortium. The consortium was formed in October 1998 at the regular annual DWD (Germany) and MeteoSwiss (Switzerland) meeting.
A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on the scientific collaboration in the field of non-hydrostatic modeling was signed by the Directors of DWD (Germany), MeteoSwiss (Switzerland), REMET(Italy, formerly USAM) and HNMS (Greece) in March/April 1999. The MoU has been replaced by an official COSMO
Agreement, which was signed by the Directors of these four national meteorological services on 3 October 2001. Recently a new COSMO
Agreement aiming at future challenges in high resolution regional numerical weather prediction as well as climate and environmental applications was accepted by the Directors of the COSMO members and was signed on 19 June 2014.
In 2002, the national weather service of Poland (IMGW) joined the Consortium in effect from 4 July. The National Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology (NMA) of Romania and the Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmenta
l Monitoring of the Russian Federation joined the Consortium in effect from 21 September 2009.
Currently, the following national meteorological services are COSMO members:
Germany
DWD Deutscher Wetterdienst
Switzerland
MCH MeteoSchweiz
Italy
REMET Reparto per la Meteorologia
Greece
HNMS Hellenic National Meteorological Service
Poland
IMGW Institute of Meteorology and Water Management
Romania
NMA National Meteorological Administration
Russia
RHM Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring
Israel
IMS Meteorological Service of Israel
These regional and military services within the member states are also participating:
Germany
AGeoBw Amt für GeoInformationswesen der Bundeswehr
Italy
CIRA Centro ItalianoRicercheAerospaziali
Italy
ARPA-SIMC ARPA Emilia Romagna Servizio Idro Meteo Clima
Italy
ARPA Piemonte Agenzia Regionale per la Protezione Ambientale Piemonte
Italy
CMCC Centro Euro-Mediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici
Seven national meteorological services, namely, Botswana Department of Meteorological Services, INMET (Brazil), DHN (Brazil), DGMAN (Oman), NCMS (United Arab Emirates) and Turkmenistan Administration of Hydrometeorology use the COSMO model within the framework of an operational licence agreement including a license fee.
National meteorological services in developing countries (e.g. Egypt, Indonesia, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Philippines, Rwanda, Tanzania, Vietnam) can use the COSMO model free of charge.
In the period 2020-2022 a gradual transition of the COSMO model system to the ICON modelling framework (ICON-NWP) is planned. The new PP C2I (Transition of COSMO to ICON-NWP) started in 2018 aims to explore the functionality of the ICON-NWP, and to compare it with current NWP setups used by the consortium members including data assimilation. At the end of the project in 2022, each COSMO member is expected to be able to perform at least quasi-operational daily ICON-NWP forecasts.