This Sunday November 14, at 12 p.m., the company Meteosim will present a portal called sail.meteosim.com, at the Espacio del Mar of the 2010 International Boat Show –which is held in the Gran Via de Fira Barcelona venue–. This portal is a new service for recreational and ocean sailing that was created within the Barcelona Science Park, as a means to promote technology transfer between the science sector and society. Using its experience in nautical meteorology, Meteosim has developed this new project in order to internationalize its sailing-specific forecast service.

From recreational skate sailing regattas or windsurf, to large transoceanic regattas, all sailing requires a forecast of waves and wind, and, although at present there is a lot of meteorological information freely available, it is also true that in the majority of cases it is low quality or low coverage information. In fact, it is very easy to find out what the weather forecast is: the weather forecast for any part of the world is availble in all communication means and in thousands of Internet portals. But it is an other matter entirely to find more detailed information on how the atmosphere will behave when performing a specific activity, such as maritime sailing, and to have access to tables and specific meteorological maps, especially wind ones, for the region where sailing will take place. Sail.meteosim.com’s technical body is the MASS (Mesoscale Atmospheric Simulation System) meteorological model, developed by Meteosim. This model updates its meteorological forecasts twice a day, in order to facilitate future knowledge of the weather and offer meteorological forecasts on tables and maps, 3 days beforehand and with hourly values to plan the sailing trip. The most advanced sailing is performed with the support of specialised software. Meteosim data are also designed to be used by modern routing tools.

Meteosim S.L –based at the Barcelona Science Park- was founded in 2003 as a result of the research conducted by many of its members in the field of mesoscale modelling and numeric weather forecast (NWP). This research began in 1994 with the launch of the first mesoscale meteorological model developed at a university department –the Department of Astronomy and Meteorology of the University of Barcelona- with the collaboration of Meso Inc.: the MASS model, which enables the performance of highly reliable meteorological forecasts with a forecast horizon of up to 72 hours, tailored to the specific needs of each client.

Since its creation Meteosim has focused its activity on the research and development of products derived from the numeric forecast of weather with important contributions in the business tissue. Within its product and services catalogue the provision of meteorological model dates (MeteoGrid), the generation of climatologies for contamination studies, the optimization of artificial snow production (Meteoneu) and the generation of applications for professional sailing (sail.meteosim.com) should be highlighted.

The reliability of the MASS meteorological model as a tool for weather forecasting has motivated its use in a completely operative manner by national companies such as Television of Catalonia, Catalonia’s Meteorological Service, the Firefighters Department of the Generalitat de Catalonia, and Spanish Challenge 2007, amongst others. The use of MASS has also enabled Meteosim to develop specific services for the Catalan Institute of Energy, Iberdrola, Endesa and other international companies and institutions such as Aviabag Meteorem, NASA, the U.S. Navy or the International Monetary Fund.