Let’s talk about climate services!

More frequent extreme high temperatures and droughts are just some examples of the impacts that we are experiencing due to climate change and natural climate variability. Society is in dire need of preparing for climate change, mitigating its causes, and paving the way for a sustainable and equitable future. A key element for the adaptation to and mitigation of anthropogenic climate change is the availability and use of climate information of demonstrable quality for decision-making.  A proof of this is the growing demand for this information to support communities, organisations and institutions in their climate-sensitive, decision-making processes.

The production of tailored climate information for decision-making is the core of climate services. Climate services are developed to respond to specific demands and needs that are sensitive to climate change and variability. They serve both to prevent or minimise the negative impacts of climate change and to take advantage of climate-related opportunities.

However, so far climate services have not been sufficiently integrated into the climate-sensitive sectors. This is partly due to a lack of communication between climate service providers and end users. To bridge this gap, climate services need to be user-tailored, co-produced, transparent, and accessible. The question then becomes: How do we achieve this?

Standards in climate services

We are surrounded by standards and norms that describe how things should be produced, should work or are best developed and implemented. Even when in certain cases there are no formal standards, we can still find descriptions, sets of requirements or conventions generated by the communities involved that help to ensure product functionality, compatibility, and/or interoperability. There are standards for just about everything: for assuring the safety of products, for protecting and restoring the environment, for ensuring the wellbeing of people, etc.

We can take the pharmaceutical industry as an example to better understand the role of standards: when creating a new drug, companies follow well-defined and specifically outlined procedures before launching it on the market. The related standards set out the steps and criteria for, among many other things, conducting exhaustive tests of the drug, establishing dosages for its adequate use according to the specific application, and ultimately ensuring the quality and safety of the drug to be administered. This process facilitates the soundness of treatments, ensures the traceability of the product, and facilitates continuous improvement over time. We can say then that standards in the pharmaceutical industry have helped to develop a robust market with credibility, interoperability and legitimacy for medicine used around the world.

Similarly, standardisation can play an important role in addressing the gaps in climate services. Standards, protocols, recommendations, and best practices can guide us in the development, delivery, traceability, market stimulation, and improvement of climate services over time. They are the basis of the quality-assured climate services, necessary for the development of a trustworthy market.

However, there is not yet a set of climate services standards nor agreement on the criteria and spectrum of actors necessary for defining the standards and, whenever needed, best practices and guidance. The Climateurope2 project has been funded by the European Commission to address all these challenges.

Climateurope2 as a catalyzer of quality-assured climate services

The Climateurope2 project is a Horizon Europe project that aims to both support the community of climate services and develop recommendations for standardising climate services. This project does not start from scratch, it builds upon the community-building activities of the predecessor Climateurope project and benefits from the synergies with a large number of other European projects and international activities.

The project has several goals:

1. Contribute to the quality, legitimacy, and relevance of climate services both in Europe and globally by providing recommendations for their standardisation.
2. Identify ways to optimise the always limited resources for the development of climate services by offering a meeting place for the climate services community.
3. Increase the adoption of reliable, equitable and quality-assured climate services by those vulnerable to climate variability and change.

All this while applying the principles of equity, diversity, and inclusion to avoid economic interests to dominate climate services and their standardisation.

Given the complexity of climate services, providing recommendations for their standardisation is not an easy task. To structure this process, Climateurope2 has identified four interrelated components of climate services:

• The decision-making context, where climate services need to deliver value.
• The ecosystem of actors and co-creation processes involved.
• The different knowledge systems, information, and processes that contribute to developing successful climate services.
• The delivery mode and its evaluation.

For some aspects of these components of climate services, good practices and conventions are either not available, there is no agreement on defining key quality attributes, or when they exist they are scattered among various communities.

Climateurope2 uses knowledge and experiences from a range of domains of knowledge, including natural and social sciences, to formulate recommendations for standardisation. This collaborative effort also includes industry professionals, standardisation experts, user communities, and technology providers, forming a community of practice. The community is gathered and maintained by Climateurope2 partners and is engaged in the process through activities such as festivals, tours, workshops and an interactive platform. This gives them a voice in the standardisation process. The formulation of the recommendations works following an equitable consensus-building process to co-develop a framework for standardising climate services. This involves the analysis of existing related standards, the development of a glossary of key terms, the analysis of the current climate services market, and the identification of criteria and requirements for all the components, among many other activities.

One of the main objectives of Climateurope2 is to prevent the misuse of climate services and avoid damage resulting from the poor understanding of user needs, poor delivery, lack of documentation, or poor quality of processes and products.

This endeavour has only just begun. Over the next few years, Climateurope2 will strive to expand the climate services community of practice, both in Europe and beyond, enabling us to progress towards agreeing on a minimum set of quality criteria, best practices, and approaches that aim at increasing the uptake of climate services to contribute to the creation of a better society for all.

Join our network and be updated!!