Jean‑Noël Thépaut took up his position as ECMWF’s Director of Copernicus Services on 1 October 2019, succeeding Juan Garces de Marcilla. ECMWF is implementing two Copernicus Earth observation services on behalf of the EU: the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) and the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS). Jean-Noël was previously the Head of C3S. Before that, he was the Head of the Data Division and Deputy Director of the Research Department at ECMWF, where he oversaw the development of world‑class data assimilation algorithms for numerical weather prediction, the exploitation of satellite observations from operational and research Earth observation platforms, and the development and production of state-of-the-art climate reanalyses. Jean‑Noël has served on several international committees and is currently co-chair of the World Climate Research Programme Data Advisory Council.