The ECMWF-led Code for Earth programme promotes open-source innovation in Earth sciences. In the 2025 edition, ten winning projects, chosen from 45 proposals and supported by partner organisations, address challenges in data visualisation, machine learning, and software development.
Code for Earth aims to drive innovation and open-source developments in the Earth sciences community by supporting developments in weather, atmosphere, climate and the three programmes that ECMWF manages on behalf of the European Union - the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) and Destination Earth (DestinE).
Each summer since 2018, selected participants from across Europe work together in teams with experienced mentors from ECMWF and partner organisations on innovative projects that turn climate data into working tools. Projects are related to the broad scope of the Centre’s activities, including data science, weather, climate or other earth sciences, visualisation and more. Outcomes of these projects may ultimately be deployed in operational systems, laying the foundations for future developments at the Centre.
“Every year we are very pleased to bring in external expertise and innovative solutions for ECMWF’s development needs in data, services and applications as part of Code for Earth and the mentors found many submissions were of really high quality this year,” said Athina Trakas, ECMWF Innovation Actions and Partnerships Coordinator and lead of the Code for Earth Coordination Team.
“This programme is also a great chance to build connections with external partner organisations through joint challenges and encourage ECMWF staff to explore new opportunities.”
The 2025 winners
Participants and mentors in the Code for Earth Final Day 2025, Bonn, Germany
The ten selected projects address and solve challenges in three science streams – data visualisation, machine learning and software development. The streams offered 15 challenges to tackle, some supported by a partnering organisations. This year’s challenge partners were IFAB (International Forum Big Data and Artificial Intelligence for Human Development), Forschungszentrum Juelich, Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon, European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity (ENTSO-E), OroraTech and GeoSphere Austria.
The 2025 winning projects are:
- AI4AirQuality: High-Resolution Air Pollution Downscaling – Team: Kevin Monsalvez-Pozo, Marcos Martinez-Roig, Nuria P. Plaza-Martín, Víctor Galván Fraile, Francisco Granell-Haro.
- EarthReach Agent: Dual-LLM Framework for Validated Meteorological Chart Descriptions - Team: Romain Bazin.
- EVALKIT: Model Error Detective – Team: Nadia Sadiki, Zakaria Bouhia.
- WEAVE – Weather-Energy Analysis & Visualisation for Extremes – Team: Stella Bourdin and Clément Devenet.
- MLCosting – Team: NGO Duc Thinh, NGUYEN Quoc Viet, PHAM Vu Hoang Anh, DAO Nhat Minh, VU Thi Hai Yen.
- PolyShell – Team: Niall Oswald, Kenneth Martin, Miriam North Ridao, Jo Wayne Tan;
- Visualizing CAMS data in the browser - Team: Joachim Kønigslieb;
- Fire Front Radar – Team: George Begkas, Marina Caporlingua, Lucy Colley.
- Physics-Aware Consistency Evaluator (PACE) – Team: Martin Vozár, Peter Váš, Marek Rodný, Martin Petrovič.
- OPEN DATA VISIO – Team: Alenka Senica.
Each team will receive a €5,000 stipend awarded by our challenge partners and ECMWF.
This year, the Final Day event celebration took place on 25 September at ECMWF's office in Bonn, Germany. All teams showcased their projects and solutions. These innovative outcomes are available on GitHub and may be incorporated into operational systems. The participants’ and mentors’ hard work and commitment played a key role in another successful Code for Earth edition.
Looking ahead: Code for Earth 2026
Looking ahead, the next competition will open in February 2026. Information will be available at the Code for Earth website.