About us and our vision

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The Center for Earth System Observation and Computational analysis (CESOC)

… is a research partnership of the Universities Bonn and Cologne as well as the Forschungszentrum Jülich. CESOC has been founded in October 2020 to support the application of Bonn, Germany, to host the new premises for the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). The successful implementation of the new location of ECMWF in Bonn took place in summer 2021. Since then, CESOC and ECMWF are closely cooperating in different activities.

Ongoing global environmental changes require comprehensive knowledge on the manifold of processes shaping our climate system. Therefore CESOC aims to comprehensively observe, understand and forecast the Earth system in times of global environmental changes.

CESOC aims at

    • integrating excellent research at the three locations Bonn, Cologne and Jülich
    • focusing on physical, mathematical and biogeochemical modelling of the coupled Earth system in view of the development of a digital Earth model (digital twin)
    • connecting novel observations with modelling and hence Earth system monitoring
    • aiming at close ties between geosciences* and new algorithmic and AI/ML methods from computer science and mathematics including HPC, Big Data, optimisation, data analysis or machine learning methods.
    • CESOC develops interdisciplinary approaches, which do not stop at faculty boundaries.
    • strengthening already ongoing cooperation in teaching through joint degree programs

    *meteorology, atmospheric chemistry, hydrology, climatology and paleoclimatology, soil sciences and near-surface geophysics, plant and agricultural sciences, geodesy, remote sensing, geoinformatics

    Mission and Objectives

    ⇒ Excellent research, innovative and methodological approaches in the environmental and natural sciences and related fields

    ⇒ Promotion of young scientists

    ⇒ Platform for scientific research cooperation between the partners

    ⇒ Development of competitive collaborative projects and expansion of externally funded research

    ⇒ Organisation of educational training as well as inviting guest researchers