This was EMS2023 in Bratislava

The EMS2023 in Bratislava was again a great event with so many opportunities to meet new people, get fresh ideas, discuss, and enjoy summer evenings in the old town. The meeting was attended by 633 participants from 43 countries: 523 onsite in Bratislava and 110 online from across the globe.

The interesting thing about the online attendance was that many more people rather did access the online sessions via the stream available from the conference website than joining via zoom. Below is a glimpse for some of the sessions on the audience numbers onsite, zoom and stream.
The live stream of the Welcome & Awards & Strategic Lecture Session on Monday afternoon was free for the public and the event watched by some 270 people.

Theodoros Economou wins EMS2023 Outstanding Poster Award

Following the many earlier competitions the EMS announced the Outstanding Poster Award again for the EMS2023, this year with the addition that all conference participants had the option to contribute to the selection of the winner in a public voting; however, not many did actually participate in the vote. The procedures foresaw a 2/3 weight for the selection committee’s vote and one third for the public vote. Essentially the two “parties” did agree so there was no dispute on who should win this award this year: Theo Economou from Climate and Atmosphere Research Center (CARE-C), The Cyprus Institute, Cyprus with a poster presenting the work by him and his colleagues, on ‘Quantifying the synergy of environmental stressors on human mortality’ was selected to receive this award. The prize certificate will be handed over at the EMS2024 in Barcelona. Read more about the poster and why it was selected.

Climate-neutrality: The impact of the EMS Annual Meetings – through travel, accommodation, catering, electricity and water consumption, etc was discussed at many occasions during the week, at the EMS General Assembly, … Travel by participants is  by far the largest contributor to the conference-related emissions. How to reduce this and still have fun, you can read in the interview with Rasmus Benestad who travelled all the way from Oslo to Bratislava on the train – as did two of his colleagues from the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, Ketil Tunheim and Reidun Gangstø.
245 of the 523 onsite participants did come to Bratislava by train. Some 20% of the the onsite participants (104) did offset their travel-related emissions (or their employers do).
Apropriately, the focus of the next Annual Meeting in Barcelona will be on exploring The role of weather and climate research in the achievement of a climate-neutral Europe. Also the EMS General Assembly in September discussed a pledge of the EMS to becoming net zero in its operations.

Some more interesting facts about EMS Annual Meeting participation

• 45% of people at EMS2023 have attended an EMS Annual Meeting for the first time;
• 67% of the participants are below 45 years;
• 5% come from Private service provider , 37% come from Universities, 29% from NMHSs and 20% from public/governmental research institutions.

From the survey we offered afterwards: of the  633 participants, 104 gave valuable feedback on the EMS2023 programme, their experience at the meeting and provided suggestions for future meetings.

Recordings of plenary sessions, uploaded presentations and more information about the meeting is available from the conference site ems2023.eu.

For photos taken during the awards, opening, media and closing sessions see the Impressions from the EMS2023 in Bratislava.