ATHENS — Greece's National Meteorological Service (EMY) on Wednesday announced the start of its collaboration with the national weather services of Cyprus and Israel for the formation of the Eastern Mediterranean Team, which will be responsible for naming of weather systems that give rise to very intense phenomena in both the cold and hot periods of the year.

The trilateral cooperation between the three weather services is being launched under the auspices of the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) and the European meteorological Services Network (EIG-EUMETNET), which has 31 members.

In addition to the Eastern Mediterranean team, there will be equivalent teams for Southwestern Europe (France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium and Luxembourg), Western Europe (Ireland, UK, Netherlands), North Europe (Norway, Sweden and Denmark), Central Europe (Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Central Mediterranean (Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, North Macedonia, Montenegro and Malta).

Also due to be set up are a Northeastern Europe team that will include Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and an Eastern Europe team made up of Bulgaria, Romania Moldova and Serbia.

This will be the first time that Europe will unite its forces through the regional cooperation of national weather services to provide an official meteorological support body for every country in order to better protect lives and property.

EMY will communicate with the Cyprus and Israeli weather services on a weekly basis to pool resources and discuss weather phenomena, using all available modern forecasting products to decide whether to name weather phenomena over the next 12 months using the following joint list:

Athina, Ballos, Carmel, Diomedes, Elpis, Fuad, Genesis, Helios, Irit, Kalypso, Lavi, Meliti, Nikias, Ora, Paris, Raphael, Semeli, Thomas, Uranis, Vion, Xenios, Yasmin, Zefyros.