Dear Prof. Eliassen,

ECMWF data access and associated revenues

this is to inform you that a rather startling fact has emerged in recent weeks as regards the revenues collected by the National Meteorological Services for ECMWF products, in that only €0.46 million was collected in 2003 as compared to the €800 - €1000 million per annum projected by the original ECMWF cost/benefit analysis compiled in 1971 under the leadership of M. Hipp of Germany.

As virtually all other actors take their large scale model data from NCEP Washington, as shown in my letter of 10 March 2004, this further highlights the catastrophic impact of the ECOMET access restrictions and pricing policies on European meteorology. I sincerely hope that corrective action can be taken as soon as possible, the most obvious and also by far the easiest being to make all ECMWF data freely available, in line with the US policy. Such a step would grossly simplify the handling of the huge sets of operational and historical data created by ECMWF and also automatically remove any associated infringements of European Competition Law.

Yours sincerely,

Daniel Soderman
PRIMET Secretary General