Summary

Climate services provide tailored climate information to support decision-making for individuals and organisations. Effective climate services depend on robust data and knowledge systems, meaningful user engagement, accessible delivery mechanisms, and responsiveness to users' needs. Yet, despite the rapid evolution of the climate services landscape in Europe, there are still no common standards governing how climate data, information, and services are generated, delivered, or applied. This lack of standardisation of essential components can undermine trust, limit uptake, and ultimately compromise the quality, legitimacy, and competitiveness of climate services in Europe.

Following a request by the European Commission, CEN-CENELEC, the European standardisation body, has started the process to develop a family of climate services standards. National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs) are central to address this challenge. They hold key national responsibilities for developing and implementing public climate services and often host national representatives in the CEN-CENELEC technical committees shaping future standards related to weather and climate. Their active involvement is therefore essential to ensure that emerging European climate service standards are appropriate, inclusive, and aligned with current best practices. In this context, collaboration between NMHSs, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), and other relevant institutions is vital to support coherence and prevent duplication across parallel initiatives.

Climateurope2 (CE2) - a Horizon Europe Coordination and Support Action led by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) - is working to develop European recommendations and procedures for the standardisation of climate services. The project outcomes directly inform the climate services standardisation process undertaken by CEN-CENELEC. As part of CE2’s engagement with different climate-sensitive sectors, we are convening a series of sectoral workshops to collect insights and perspectives that will inform these recommendations.

This upcoming online event focuses on NMHSs, bringing together their key climate services representatives from across Europe and beyond to discuss the implications and opportunities of standardisation for public climate service providers.

While NMHSs play a central role in delivering public-interest climate services, many do not cover the full value chain to end users, leaving room for other actors within the European market. This raises important questions:

• How will the new CEN-CENELEC standards affect WMO practices and guidance?
• What contributions do NMHSs consider essential to include in the standards?

• How can confusion among users of climate services from NMHSs be avoided?

To explore these questions, CE2 will host an online workshop on 15 January 2026 10:00-16:15 CET. The event will bring together representatives from NMHSs, WMO and its committees, and ECMWF for dialogue on the future of climate services standardisation in Europe.

Workshop objectives

This will be a collaborative, discussion-based workshop designed to ensure all participants can actively contribute. It will consist mainly in a few introductory presentations, several breakout group discussion sessions, and summary plenary sessions, and has the following objectives:

• Inform NMHSs about the European Commission’s request to CEN-CENELEC and the ongoing standardisation process.
• Exchange experiences and perspectives on existing national practices, quality assurance mechanisms, and priorities for standardisation.

• Gather input and recommendations from NMHSs to inform Climateurope2’s contribution to the family of climate service standards under preparation.

Access the event's agenda here. To ensure focused and productive discussions, participation will be limited to a maximum of two representatives per organisation. Participants should have a working knowledge of climate services, although prior experience of standardisation is not required.

We look forward to your participation and to shaping, together, a coherent and effective framework for standardising climate services in Europe.