Professional interests

• Land and atmospheric reanalysis
• Essential Climate Variables 
• Production of Climate Data Records
• Climate Change and socio-economical impact
• Land surface data assimilation
• Numerical Weather Prediction
• Remote sensing and microwave emission modelling
  
  

Professional pathway

• Senior Scientific Officer / ECV manager, Copernicus Climate Change Service, ECMWF, UK  (Apr 2020 - Present)
• Reanalysis Scientist / Technical Officer, Copernicus Climate Change Service, ECMWF, UK  (Feb 2016 - March 2020)
• Research Scientist, Data Assimilation Section, ECMWF, UK  (Nov 2008 - Jan 2016)
• Post-doctorate, Climate Change and Modeling Unit, CERFACS, France (2007-2008)
• Doctorate (PhD), Meteorology at the Medium Scale Group, Météo-France (2004-2007)
• Research Assistant / PhD, Mathematical and Geodesy Positioning Group, TU Delft (2002-2003)
• Young Graduate Trainee, Earth Observation Section, European Space Agency, ESTEC  (2001-2002)
• Junior fellowship at University of Valencia  (1999 - 2000)

Committees and projects

• SMOS Quality Working Group
• SMOS-NEXT Scientific Advisory Group
• HYDRAS+ Steering Committee Member
• Copernicus Cross-CDR of Essential Climate Variables (ECV) group chair
• European Commission Polar Expert Group member for Sentinel Expansion
• ESA TRUTHS Earth Watch mission: member of the Mission Advisory Group (MAG) 
• ESA Hydro-GNSS scout mission; member of the Scientific Advisory Group (SAG)
• Sentinel-3 Quality Working Group (QWG) member
• ESA's Fiducial Reference Measurements for Soil Moisture project; member of the Science Advisory Group (SAG)

Publications (here)

CV (here)

Contact

Dr. Joaquin Muñoz Sabater
ECMWF, Bonn site, Germany.
Email: joaquin.munoz at ecmwf.int
Telephone: 

About

Joaquín Muñoz-Sabater was born in Valencia, Spain. He obtained his Ph.D. degree in April 2007 in France, receiving the distinction 'mention très honorable'. 

Since April 2020, he has served as Senior Scientist / ECV manager at the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), operated by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) on behalf of the European Commission (EC). In this role, Joaquín leads the C3S programme of Climate Monitoring using satellite observations and oversees the management and coordination of C3S contracts aimed at producing Climate Data Records of Essential Climate Variables based on satellite observations. 

Prior to his Ph.D., Joaquín held research positions at the European Space Agency (ESA) in The Netherlands, contributing to feasibility studies for the EARTHcare mission, and at Delft University of Technology, where he specialized in radar interferometry. His doctoral research was conducted at Météo France and awarded by Paul Sabatier University (Toulouse III, France), focusing on the assimilation of remote sensing data for land surface characterization.

Following his PhD, he worked at the European Centre for Research and Advanced Training in Scientific Computation (CERFACS) in Toulouse, leading a project of the French National Hydrometeorological and Flood Forecasting Centre, assessing the impact of assimilating streamflow observations on flood forecasting applications.

In 2008 Joaquín joined ECMWF, initially within the Data Assimilation Section, where he specialized in the assimilation of passive remote sensing data, with a particular focus on Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) data for soil moisture analysis and its impact on weather forecasting. He also contributed to the development of a Neural Network designed to produce a short-latency soil moisture product based on SMOS data.

In 2016, he transitioned to the Copernicus Department as a reanalysis scientist, where he produced the ERA5-Land reanalysis and oversaw land surface aspects of ECMWF reanalyses. Additionally, he served as the technical officer for C3S terrestrial ECV contracts before assuming his current leadership role.