By Alison Withers

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) -Europe’s top weather forecaster said on Wednesday it had opened access to real-time data in a move that will support early warning systems for extreme weather events across the globe.

As climate change drives more frequent and intense weather, from heatwaves to floods and storms, getting access to quality data remains a central part of efforts to understand and manage the risks.

The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, backed by 35 mostly European countries, collects 800 million observations a day to help predict the weather, and oversees one of the world’s largest meteorological data archives.

As part of a regional push by some European countries to move to open data, the centre will make available about 16 times as much data in a

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