This session concerns the preparation and dissemination of standardised climate data and information for general use (e.g. public, media, education) and for socio-economic sector use (e.g. energy, transport, agriculture, water, construction, tourism, health, insurance). This type of information is used by a wide audience, rather than being bespoke / customer-specific, and likely to be on national or European scales. Types of climate data include averages, extremes, frequency distributions and anomalies. The services could cover past, present or future climates.

Dialogue between the climate scientist and the user is needed to ensure that analyses and presentations are relevant to the application. These should be readily accessible, easy to interpret, up-to-date, of appropriate quality and easy to integrate with other user data. Relevant metadata and quality flags should also be available. Contributions are therefore invited from both data providers and data users, to encourage this dialogue.

Major topics are:
- Climate services for the general public and the media
- Climate services for education
- Sector orientated applications (e.g. for energy - hydropower production, wind energy, consumption)
- Analyses of derived variables (e.g. degree days, growing season, wind-chill, drought indices)
- Preparation of weather-related codes of practice for design and planning (e.g. urban drainage, wind loading, icing).
- Methods to place noteworthy weather into context (including analysis of extreme values and of long-term trends)
- Integration with user data – presentation methods, data formats etc
- Dissemination of climate information (e.g. Internet, web-technologies, portals for climate information)
- International initiatives (e.g. WMO, EUMETNET, EC)
- Activities supporting capacity building (e.g. sharing databases, workshops and other forms of knowledge transfer)