Climate services challenge the traditional interface between users and providers of climate information as it requires the establishment of a dialogue between subjects, who often have limited knowledge of each-other’s activities and practices. Increasing the understanding and usability of climate information for societal use has become a major challenge where economic growth, and social development crucially depends on adaptation to climate variability and change. To this regard, climate services do not only create user-relevant climate information, but also stimulate the need to quantify vulnerabilities and come up with appropriate adaptation solutions that can be applied in practice.

This session aims to gather best practices and lessons learnt, for how climate services can successfully facilitate adaptation to climate variability and change by providing climate information that is tailored to the real user need. Contributions are strongly encouraged from international experiences (GFCS, CSP, …); completed European projects CLIM-RUN and ECLISE; ongoing initiatives IMPACT2C, NACLIM, EUPORIAS, SPECS, ECOMS; the forthcoming JPI-Climate, ECSP and COPERNICUS as well as national, regional and local initiatives.