Public mandate, private algorithms: the urgent case for Public Climate Services in the AI age

This paper conceptualises the future of artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled public climate services as publicly governed and publicly funded digital infrastructures that provide climate data, forecasts, risk assessments, and decision-support tools through AI-driven analytics and natural-language, prompt-based interfaces. Climate services are increasingly central to climate governance, underpinning decision-making in areas such as energy systems, infrastructure planning, finance, and local adaptation. At the same time, the rapid integration of AI, particularly generative and machine-learning systems, is transforming how climate information is produced, accessed, and interpreted. AI-enabled climate services offer significant opportunities for process automation, optimisation, personalised information delivery, and the translation of complex climate data into actionable knowledge for diverse users. However, the growing reliance on privately controlled algorithms, data infrastructures, and computing facilities raises critical concerns related to governance, transparency, accountability, and trust. While the technical architecture of climate services increasingly relies on advanced machine learning and large-scale climate models, their legitimacy as public services depends on governance arrangements that prioritise public value, equity, and long-term societal benefit over profit maximisation. The tension between the public mandate of climate services and the private nature of much contemporary AI infrastructure challenges traditional notions of openness and publicness. Using the PESTLE framework, the paper analyses the political, economic, social, technological, legal, and environmental dimensions shaping the co-production value chain of AI-enabled climate services. This approach highlights both risks, such as market concentration, reduced transparency, and unequal access, and opportunities, including enhanced accessibility, improved decision support, and strengthened climate resilience. The paper argues for the urgent development of a pan-European, decentralised public climate service built on sovereign AI infrastructure and open governance principles. Such an initiative would support democratic control over climate intelligence, advance digital sovereignty, and align technological innovation with climate justice and the twin digital and green transitions.