Tomàs Molina

The EMS is happy to announce the first winner of the new EMS Communicating Weather and Climate Award: Tomàs Molina of TV3 Catalunya, MeteoCat and the University of Barcelona

There are not many weather broadcasters to whom the term “legendary” can be added, but Tomàs Molina is definitely within this category. Tomàs began his career as a Broadcast Meteorologist almost forty years ago, 1987 with TV3 Catalunya and he has led their meteorological section since the 1990. In addition to his work with the broadcasting organisation, he has had a long association with the regional Catalan weather service, MeteoCat, and has also contributed as senior advisor to the “Services Audiovisual Meteorology” (SAM) company who pioneered many approaches to communicating weather information on digital multimedia platforms.

He has had a long association with the University of Barcelona where he has lectured in weather forecasting for many years. Through this work he has been a tutor and mentor to a great number of broadcast meteorologists who now grace the screens of many national and regional TV channels throughout Spain. His research interest has been in the communication of meteorology, and this culminated with the award of a Ph.D in recent years.

Tomàs has always been energetic in pushing out the boundaries of what a broadcast meteorologist can achieve. Aside from presenting the routine weather broadcasts on TV3 Catalunya he has presented a series of documentary programmes on weather-related themes, and has also published several meteorology-themed books in Catalan, for both children and adults, which have helped to popularise and inform the people of Catalunya on weather and climate change topics. Indeed he has been very vocal on climate change issues, joining the Board of the European Climate Broadcasters Network established under the European Commission and serving as a European Climate Pact ambassador.

For many years Tomàs has engaged with the profession of Broadcast Meteorology across Europe and beyond. A regular attender at the Forum International de Meteo, he has been a long-time member, and past Chair, of the International Association of Broadcast Meteorology (IABM). In this capacity he was Co-Chair of the IABM-organised First World Conference on Broadcast Meteorology, held in Barcelona twenty years ago in 2004; a unique event that brought weather broadcasters from the world over to debate and discuss critical issues for the profession.

Always seeking new challenges, this year Tomàs put his name forward as a candidate for Member of the European Parliament representing the Republican Left of Catalonia party. Following the election the coalition of which the Republican Left of Catalonia party is a member won three MEP seats, and Tomàs will take an MEP seat between 2027 and 2029 as part of a rotation arrangement. This will present him with yet another forum – in this instance the highly-influential European Parliament – in which to demonstrate his excellence in communication on weather and climate matters.