Skilful climate predictions on seasonal-to-decadal timescales can generate large socio-economic benefits, but current forecast quality is relatively low over Europe and the Mediterranean Sea. In general, our limited understanding of the mechanisms and processes responsible for predictability and model systematic errors hamper our capability to simulate and forecast seasonal-to-decadal climate variability, especially over the Euro–Mediterranean region. Improved global climate model calibration and regionalization techniques, as well as better forecast verification methods need to be developed specifically for this region to both extract as much climate information as possible from operational forecast systems, and tailor this information to produce top–quality climate services for sectors with high societal impacts in the Mediterranean.

This Session is devoted to research and development aimed at improving climate prediction capabilities and related services on seasonal-to-decadal timescales in the Euro–Mediterranean region, and it invites contributions on (but not only restricted to):

- understanding of sources and mechanisms for predictability in the target region,
- novel, process-based methods for bias correction, downscaling, optimal combination of different sources of information,
- innovative empirical forecasting models,
- climate services based on end-user tailored climate forecasts, in relevant socio–economic sectors for the Mediterranean (e.g., water management, renewable energy, agriculture, tourism, forestry and fire risk)

The Session will act as a workshop organized by the JPI–ERA4CS EU–project MEDSCOPE (www. medscope–project.eu)