BSC-CNS (Barcelona Supercomputing Center – Centro Nacional de Supercomputación) is the National Supercomputing Facility in Spain and was officially constituted in April 2005. BSC-CNS manages MareNostrum, one of the most powerful supercomputers in Europe, located at the Torre Girona chapel. The mission of BSC-CNS is to investigate, develop and manage information technology in order to facilitate scientific progress. With this aim, special dedication has been taken to areas such as Computer Sciences, Life Sciences, Earth Sciences and Computational Applications in Science and Engineering.

The Earth Sciences Department was established with the objective of carrying out research in Earth system modelling, initially focusing on atmospheric physics and chemistry. The group directed by Dr. José María Baldasano, coming from the Environmental Modelling Laboratory of the Technical University of Catalonia (LMA-UPC) has as main topics of research: air quality modelling, mineral dust modelling, atmospherical modelling and global and regional climate modelling.