This was the ECS MeteoXchange Conference 2026

The fifth edition of the MeteoXchange conference took place between April 16 and 17, 2026, confirming its extraordinary growth with over 80 abstracts submitted  (2025, there were about 40 abstracts). Structuring the programme proved to be an exciting challenge for the organizing committee, resulting in four poster sessions and five oral sessions dedicated to crucial topics: Climatology, Climate Change and Extreme Events (spanning two full sessions), Machine Learning and Atmospheric Sciences, Climate and Meteorological Modeling, as well as Aerosols and Cloud Microphysics.

The event took on a truly global dimension, bringing together researchers from more than 20 countries across every continent – from the Fiji Islands to the west coast of the Americas. This worldwide reach was also reflected in the management of time zones, seamlessly spanning the globe from UTC+12 to UTC-8.

Once again this year, the conference stayed true to its founding mission: serving as an ideal springboard for early career scientists, providing the perfect opportunity to “break the ice” ahead of the EGU General Assembly and other major international events. A heartfelt thank you goes to our sponsors, Copernicus.org and the European Meteorological Society (EMS), for their unwavering support and for providing this year’s two prestigious awards. Selected by a dedicated jury, the Best Poster Award went to a piece of work that won free registration for the EMS Annual Meeting (scheduled to take place in Utrecht, Netherlands, from September 6 to 11, 2026). Meanwhile, the Best Oral Presentation was awarded a free publication in one of Copernicus’ Open Access journals. We would also like to thank our third sponsor, UPAS, who provides us with the infrastructure for our website, mailing list and email accounts. 

A fundamental contribution to the scientific value of the event came from our two keynote speakers: Prof. Paul D. Williams (Professor of Atmospheric Science at the University of Reading) and Dr. Damjan Jelić (founder of the Next Generation Science Leader initiative). Their lectures, respectively titled “Turbulence Ahead! Air travel in a warmer world” and “Navigating Meteorology Careers in 2026: Expanding Your Horizon”, provided enlightening and highly inspiring insights for all conference attendees.

Looking ahead, the organizers’ goal remains ambitious: to grow MeteoXchange year after year, reaching more early career scientists worldwide, elevating the quality of the event – thanks also to the valuable feedback received – and expanding the range of awards.

To achieve all this, we aim to build an increasingly close-knit organizing committee, and we are ready to welcome new members and fresh energy. If you would like to get involved and join the team, please contact the organizing committee at info@meteoxchange.de or subscribe to our mailing list so you don’t miss any updates.

The next MeteoXchange conference will be held from 18-19 March 2027. Stay tuned!

Stories from our two award winners about their participation in this year’s conference will hopefully inspire even more young scientists to take part in next year’s conference themselves. Tommaso Lamesta (Aarhus University) reports: “The MeteoXchange conference provides a valuable opportunity for early-career scientists to engage with an international conference comprising experts from around the world and focused on atmospheric processes. This project, launched in 2021, received a one-year funding boost from the Research in Germany initiative. It provided me with a valuable opportunity to follow innovative and pioneering works presented during the two days of the conference. From Climatology to Machine Learning applications in Atmospheric Sciences, this is a great opportunity for ECS in the field of atmospheric sciences and related disciplines, with the aim not only of presenting scientific results but also of creating opportunities for networking and international exchange. The conference modality was clearly one of the most outstanding elements of the experience. Despite being an online conference, MeteoXchange decided to move towards a different approach, adopting gather.town as the base platform for hosting the event. Unlike classic online meeting platforms, gather.town offers a virtual bidimensional real-time interactive space, in which participants are free to move and interact with the environment and other participants, using an avatar. With this approach, participants can visit talks rooms, poster sessions, and start conversations with other participants. This approach to online conferences allows us to overcome typical limits of a classical method, often perceived as static and not interactive enough, favouring a dynamic closer to a live conference. I strongly suggest MeteoXchange to ECS and not as a great annual opportunity to explore a pivotal method for scientific communication and networking across international scales in the field of atmospheric sciences.”

Sarah Paratoni (KIT, now University of Innsbruck): “On 16–17 April, I had the pleasure of attending the virtual MeteoXchange conference. This was only the second conference I have participated in, and my first in an online format. Having previously used Gather Town during the pandemic, it was interesting and enjoyable to experience it again in a professional conference setting. The program featured a broad range of topics, spanning from cloud microphysics to global climate processes. I particularly appreciated the opportunity to hear perspectives from researchers around the world and to learn about areas outside my immediate expertise. It was also nice to reconnect with a few familiar faces while meeting many new ones. Although I felt somewhat nervous before my presentation, the virtual format made the experience less intimidating, as it is easy to forget the size of the audience when you cannot see them directly. I was especially honored to receive the Outstanding Oral Presentation Award, given the high quality of contributions throughout the conference. Overall, MeteoXchange provided an excellent platform to develop presentation skills in a supportive environment among peers at similar career stages. I would like to sincerely thank the organizers for their outstanding work—ensuring a well-structured schedule, smooth coordination, and thoughtful engagement through questions and discussions. I would highly recommend this conference to any meteorology enthusiast eager to present their work and connect with the wider scientific community.”

MeteoXchange ECS Organizing Committee 2026

Sebastiano Carpentari (University of Trento), Carola Detring (German Meteorological Society), Mohamed Foudad (University of Reading), Julian Alberto Giles (University of Bonn)