Switzerland is an alpine country in the center of Europe. Regular climate observation with instruments goes back until 1768 at the university of Basle and 1784 at the university of Geneva.

Historically Switzerland is a country with a prominent decentralized structure and political life. The decision-making is divided on there different levels: local, regional and national.

In the case of climate observation different agencies on the national level and universities and other organizations on the regional are involved. There is no leading agency or coordination group which is responsible for all activities.

While there are ongoing activities to enhance the international cooperation for climate observing like GCOS or GEOSS we tray also to do the same on a national level.

In order to enhance the national climate activities in an alpine country, the Federal Office of meteorology and climatology decided to build up a national ‘GCOS-Roundtable’. Therefore we invited more than 10 different agencies and universities to participate at the first national roundtable meeting.

Major themes for this first meeting were:

• Coordination of important climate observing activities (snow, glaciers, radiation) for the UNFCCC reporting

• Identification of gaps in the current climate observation system in Switzerland

• Definition of new integrated climate studies that are missing today

The ‘GCOS-Roundtable’ might be an instrument to bring all partners together and to have with that a national review team, who can supervise the ongoing work and influence future activities. In order to make this roundtable more attractive we also provide some money that can be managed by this group.