In this session on climate services, the conveners want to accommodate and present a broad range of activities, plans and ideas that illustrate how the demand for climate services in Europe is developing and being addressed, which tools and techniques we can use, who the actors are etc.

Examples of topics to be addressed are

- Climate services for the general public, media and education
- General applications and tailored services addressing sector orientated questions about (possibly changing) local or regional climatic conditions (weather extremes!) for e.g. builders, farmers or industrial producers to the development of climate scenarios for a river basin to assess future security against flooding.
- Analyses of derived variables (e.g. degree days, growing season, wind-chill, drought indices)
- Preparation of climate- and weather-related codes of practice for design and planning (e.g. urban drainage, wind loading, icing).
- User guidance (how to get to the real question, how to communicate about uncertainty, how to present information (internet/report))
- Communicating uncertainties.
- Time series analysis (e.g. the Delta-method versus the use of climate model output.
- Extreme statistics (e.g. extreme scenarios or extremes in probability functions of plausible scenarios)
- 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), communication with specific sectors (questionnaires, user boards workshops)
- International initiatives (e.g. WMO, EUMETNET, EC)
- Activities supporting capacity building (e.g. sharing databases, workshops and other forms of knowledge

Also comparisons of climate services in different countries, by different providers, differences between services for the current and future climate are very welcome. We ask people to pay explicit attention to why the climate services were provided in the way they are provided: (e.g. in the Netherlands KNMI is not allowed to develop commercial activities, therefore much of the services related to weather forecasts are provided by commercial providers ………other examples? …….)

In all examples we are looking for a good mixture of:
• services related to current/future climate, standard/tailored services
• different types of users: policy- and decision makers, companies, researchers
• different sectors: water, agriculture, health, transport, nature etc.
• different countries
• different regions: seas, mountains, river basins etc.
• different scales: specific locations, urban problems and solutions, regional etc.

This session is organised as a joint session with CE (Communication and Education).