Jørn Kristiansen commences his role as Deputy Director-General and Director of Forecasts.
Dr Jørn Kristiansen has today (1 September 2026) taken up his position as Deputy Director-General, with responsibility for the Operational Delivery and Digital Infrastructure portfolio, and as Director of Forecasts.
Dr Jørn Kristiansen joins ECMWF from Norway’s national meteorological service MET Norway after spending 21 years there, with the last ten as Director of the Development Centre for Weather Forecasting.
Dr Kristiansen will lead the Forecast Department at ECMWF and further reinforce its operational forecasting and service delivery, ensuring that forecasting, computing, services and user engagement work as a coherent end‑to‑end system.
The role supports operational reliability, digital excellence and coordinated delivery across operational systems, enabling technologies and user-facing services, while ensuring that the evolving needs of Member and Co-operating States are reflected in delivery and priorities.
On starting the position, Dr Kristiansen said: “I am honoured to join ECMWF and excited to build on the strong relationships between the centre and Europe’s national meteorological services. By listening closely to their expertise and understanding the needs of their users and partners, we can ensure that ECMWF’s products and services deliver the greatest possible value."
In his leadership of Yr.no – a leading online weather service formed through a collaboration between MET Norway and the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK) – Dr Jørn Kristiansen played a key role in making data more localised and accurate, based on users’ needs. The work came five years after he started as a research scientist in numerical weather prediction (NWP) at MET Norway and followed a PhD in meteorology at the University of Oslo.
As head of the NWP division of the R&D department between 2011 and 2015, he helped establish a unique collaboration between Finland, Norway and Sweden to develop a high-resolution ensemble prediction system for more reliable weather forecasts.
As Director for the Development Centre for Weather Forecasting, he further developed the automated information chain for weather forecasting, from observations, including exploiting a massive amount of citizen observations, to end-users and open data, and from research to operations. More recently, he was key in developing Bris, a data-driven weather prediction model with a flexible stretched grid, allowing high resolution to be concentrated over areas of particular interest while retaining lower resolution elsewhere.
Outside of MET Norway, Dr Kristiansen was from 2024 until now co-chair of the WMO Polar Coupled Analysis and Prediction for Services steering group, a co-production research network initiative focused on end-users that is crucial to significantly advance the provision of forecasts and their uncertainties. He also co-led the ECMWF Machine Learning Pilot Project.
Dr Kristiansen is looking forward to bringing all this experience to ECMWF and to getting stuck in: “My first priority is to listen, build relationships and understand where we can achieve more together. Anemoi shows what collaboration can deliver. I look forward to finding further opportunities to combine expertise in software, high-performance computing, data access and training.”
Florian Pappenberger, Director-General of ECMWF, added: “We are delighted to welcome Jørn to ECMWF. He combines deep operational experience with a strong record of turning scientific and technological advances into better services for users. His collaborative approach will be invaluable as we strengthen the links between forecasting, digital infrastructure and service delivery, working closely with our Member and Co-operating States. I very much look forward to working with him.”
Dr Kristiansen joins fellow Deputy Director-General Irina Sandu who took up her role on 1 July, with responsibility for the Science and Innovation portfolio, and as Director of Science and Innovation.