The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) aims to expand its training programme on Machine Learning (ML) applications in the context of the Destination Earth (DestinE) initiative. This programme will develop innovative learning formats, ensuring an engaging educational experience for participants. Submit your proposal by 20 November.
In DestinE’s second phase, which began in June 2024 and will last two years, ECMWF and its partners are accelerating the use of ML and Artificial Intelligence (AI) for enhancing the capabilities of the Digital Twins and Digital Twins Engine, which ECMWF is responsible for implementing. These efforts will include the creation of training programmes designed to build ML capacity across Europe.
Objectives and scope of the tender
The overall objective is to create engaging, high-quality training materials including their delivery as courses. ECMWF is looking for partners that will develop various educational formats, including e-learning modules, webinars, Jupyter notebooks, webinars with audience interaction and Q&A sessions, interactive articles, and an educational podcast explaining ML concepts in the context of DestinE and more. This content will focus on both foundational and advanced ML topics to provide the target audience with diverse opportunities to enhance their ML skills. The learning modules will mainly target an audience that has a background in Earth Sciences and is familiar with basic knowledge of weather and climate science, statistics and informatics.
The learning materials should build on DestinE’s ML activities led by ECMWF and our partners, which aim to develop an ML-based Earth system model and enhance the interactivity of the DestinE system. They should also help promote the Digital Twins and Digital Twin Engine. This requires regular meetings with our experts at ECMWF. A good point of orientation for the courses are ECMWF’s existing training materials focusing on ML, especially the Massive Online Open Course (MOOC) on ML for Weather and Climate which took place over 2022-2023.
The successful tenderer will also coordinate the scientific content of the online courses, creating a cohesive educational experience and contribute to organise a training event planned for autumn 2025 in Bonn, featuring presentations, panel discussions, and hands-on sessions.
Why and how to apply
ECMWF invites proposals from organisations with expertise in educational content development, especially in the fields of Machine Learning, weather, and climate sciences. This is an exciting opportunity to contribute to the EU funded DestinE initiative to build digital twins of the Earth, as well as to promote the cutting-edge application of ML in these fields. This will help to build a skilled European community of professionals equipped to exploit the opportunities opened by the recent breakthroughs in application of AI/ML in weather and climate.
Proposals can be submitted via the ECMWF website, with a deadline of 20 November.
For more details, see the full invitation to tender.
Destination Earth is a European Union-funded initiative launched in 2022, with the aim to build a digital replica of the Earth system by 2030. The initiative is being jointly implemented under the leadership of DG CNECT by three entrusted entities: the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), responsible for the creation of the first two ‘digital twins’ and the ‘Digital Twin Engine’, the European Space Agency (ESA) responsible for building the ‘Core Service Platform’, and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), responsible for the creation of the ‘Data Lake’.
We acknowledge the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking for awarding this project strategic access to the EuroHPC supercomputers LUMI, hosted by CSC (Finland), and the LUMI consortium, Marenostrum5, hosted by BSC (Spain) Leonardo, hosted by Cineca (Italy) and MeluXina, hosted by LuxProvide (Luxembourg) through a EuroHPC Special Access call.
More information about Destination Earth is on the Destination Earth website and the EU Commission website.
For more information about ECMWF’s role visit ecmwf.int/DestinE
For any questions related to the role of ECMWF in Destination Earth, please use the following email links: