About us and our vision

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.

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 takes up the challenge by

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 gesosciences* 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.

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

The three partners

… count many years of scientific cooperation. They are already using their synergy potential in numerous joint projects. Also in personnel interdependencies.

The proven complementarity of their programmes and structures in research in conjunction with university teaching are an excellent basis for strategic alliances. The coordination as well as joint projects in cutting-edge research meet the criteria of internationally recognised excellence.