Austrian Research and Technology Report 2020

The Central Institute for Meteorology and 
Geodynamics (ZAMG)
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ZAMG serves as Austria’s state meteorological and 
geophysical service. It was established in 1851 and is 
thus the oldest government meteorological service in 
the world. In this role, ZAMG performs the following 
essential tasks:
• It collates, edits and archives the results of mete-
orological and geophysical studies and makes 
these available to other users. To this end, it oper-

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ates its own measurement networks to monitor, in 
particular, the weather and climate, natural and 
human-made earth tremors and the Earth’s mag-
netic and gravitational fields.
• It informs the general public, writes assessments 
and acts as an advisor as well as providing infor-
mation, guidance and warnings in the event of cri-
ses, accidents and natural or environmental disas-
ters. Besides the information shared with the gen-
eral public, ZAMG also offers bespoke services, 
e.g. for disaster response teams.
• It addresses meteorological and geophysical is-
sues relating to environmental protection.
• It produces climatological and geophysical sur-
veys of Austria.
• It conducts application-oriented research across 
the whole spectrum of meteorology and geophys-
ics, including their related fields.
Collaboration with Austrian, foreign and internation-
al institutions and universities in the field of meteo-
rology and geophysics is essential if ZAMG is to per-
form these duties at a high level. With this in mind, it 
also takes part in international research projects 
such as those forming part of Horizon 2020. These 
wide-ranging partnerships cover topics including: the 
joint development of meteorological models for 
weather forecasting; the operation of the Eu-
rope-wide weather warning portal METEOALARM,
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which ZAMG played a large part in developing and 
now runs; training staff at other meteorological ser-
vices in order to offer state-of-the-art services; and 
devising methods for seismic monitoring. Depending 
on the issue at hand, ZAMG will also cooperate with 
other scientific disciplines or with users of its ser-
vices, such as social scientists to improve how warn-
ings and forecasts are communicated or with insur-
ers to assess the impact of damage. ZAMG’s mea-
surement networks also make key contributions to 
108 See 
http://www.meteoalarm.info/
109 See 
https://www.sonnblick.net/de/
110 See 
http://www.conrad-observatory.at/
the relevant global measurement networks and pro-
grammes such as the World Meteorological Organi-
sation (WMO) and monitoring the ban on nuclear 
weapons testing. It works with the World Bank and 
other development agencies to help meteorological 
services in developing countries to grow their capac-
ities and achieve their sustainable development 
goals.
Headquartered in Vienna, ZAMG also has four cus-
tomer service offices in Graz, Innsbruck, Klagenfurt 
and Salzburg. Since 1886, it has also operated a 
mountaintop observatory on the Hoher Sonnblick in 
Salzburg in cooperation with the “Sonnblick-Verein”. 
As well as being important for ZAMG’s meteorologi-
cal and climatological work, the data gathered also 
form the basis for research of many different issues 
relevant to both science and society as a whole. 
These include, for instance, the spread of air pollut-
ants, the causes and effects of climate change and 
health- and safety-related questions such as the im-
pact of UV radiation, aspects of radioactivity and the 
study of altitude sickness.
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In the field of geophysics, since 2002 ZAMG has 
operated the Conrad Observatory on and inside the 
Trafelberg mountain in Lower Austria, which focuses 
on seismological, gravimetric and geomagnetic ob-
servations. The observatory is particularly well pro-
tected against external influences caused by tem-
perature, vibrations and magnetic fields, enabling 
extremely precise measurements to be taken.
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As of 31 December 2019, ZAMG employed 131 civ-
il servants and a further 203 staff within the scope of 
its partial legal capacity.