In this session on climate services, the intention is to consider a broad range of activities specifically related to the development of national and regional climate services in Europe, focusing on creating climate services through partnerships and dialogue, between scientists, developers, providers and end-users.
Consistent with this, a number of general topics and questions to be addressed are:
• Mechanisms and structures for establishing and maintaining sustainable climate services and partnerships between researchers, providers and translators, and managing expectations of users
• Communicating capabilities and limitations of climate information (including credibility, reliability, and uncertainty)
• What particular challenges and issues arise in the provision of information about high-impact climate extremes?
• Interaction with major research initiatives such as, for European downscaling, Euro-CORDEX, Med-CORDEX and VALUE and, with respect to earth observations, the COPERNICUS programme
• Examples of information being used to support decision or policy making
• How do climate services interact with weather services?
• How do these activities fit within the context of the Global Framework for Climate Services?
Specific examples are sought which, taken together, span the range of actors and requirements for climate services and reflecting:
• The need for information on different timeframes and spatial scales
• The different types of users, providers and intermediaries
• Different sectors and decision-making contexts
• Different countries (including comparisons of different approaches to climate services being taken in different countries)
• Different funding and access models (e.g., publically-funded, commercial services)