In Europe, the naming of weather systems is the responsibility of the national meteorological services belonging to the geographical area in which a weather system originates. These services collaborate to give the system a name, which is then used throughout Europe. This framework was set up beginning in 2013 by EUMETNET, a network of 33 European national meteorological services. On the North Atlantic coast, the United Kingdom's Met Office, Ireland's Met Éireann and the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) collaborate on names. Other groups include the southwestern countries of Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Spain and Portugal, and the northern group of Denmark, Sweden and Norway. Several countries in central and eastern Europe use a naming scheme from the Free University of Berlin. Tropical storms crossing the Atlantic keep the name assigned by the United States National Hurricane Center.
History The practice of using names to identify weather systems goes back several centuries. Systems were often named after places, people or things they hit before the start of formal naming schemes. Credit for the first usage of personal names for weather is generally given to the Queensland Government Meteorologist Clement Wragge, who named tropical cyclones and anticyclones between 1887–1907. Wragge used names drawn from the letters of the Greek alphabet, Greek and Roman mythology and female names, to describe weather systems over Australia, New Zealand and the Antarctic. After the new Australian government had failed to create a federal weather bureau and appoint him director, Wragge started naming cyclones after political figures. This system of naming weather systems subsequently fell into disuse for several years after Wragge retired, until it was revived in the latter part of the Second World War. Despite falling into disuse the naming scheme was occasionally mentioned in the press, with an editorial published in the Launceston Examiner newspaper on 5 October 1935 that called for the return of the naming scheme.
Criteria for naming storms There is no universal definition of what constitutes a windstorm in Europe, nor is there a universally accepted system of naming storms. For example, in Greece, naming criteria were established for storms when the storm's forecasted winds are above 50 km/h (14 m/s; 27 kn; 31 mph) over land, with the wind expected to have a significant impact to infrastructures. In Denmark, a windstorm must have an hourly average windspeed of at least 90 km/h (25 m/s; 49 kn; 56 mph). Naming conventions used in Europe are generally based on conditions that are forecast, not conditions that have actually occurred, as public awareness and preparedness are often cited as the main purpose of the naming schemes–for example, a reference. Therefore, an assignment of a storm name does not mean that a storm will actually develop. Ahead of the winter of 2015-16, the United Kingdom's Met Office and the Irish Met Éireann announced that they would start naming winter storms, in order to take control and inject authority into a messy situation where the media was using a variety of names for weather events.
EUMETNET naming groups During 2013, in response to the increasing usage by the European media of common names for any meteorological depression that caused disruptive weather, a task force of the Working Group for the Cooperation between European Forecasters (WGCEF) of the European Meteorological Network (EUMETNET) established a pan-European naming scheme.
The main objective of this project was to develop a project that would be operated by all of the European national meteorological services and used by the media as well as other agencies such as civil protection. For the purposes of the project, Europe was divided into six groups of neighbouring countries with similar weather and climate characteristics. Should a system move from one area to another, it will retain the name it was assigned by the original weather service.
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