The Copernicus climate change service: current status and future perspectives.

At the end of July 2021, the Climate Change Service of Copernicus, signed a new contribution agreement with the European Commission which will support the service until the end of 2028. Over the course of the next 7 years ECMWF,  which has been entrusted with the responsibility of implementing the service, will continue to make climate data freely available to its many users in Europe and beyond  and will support the mainstreaming of climate service provision.

The current portfolio of the service ranges from historical observations to climate projections and includes both reanalyses and seasonal prediction products. The technical infrastructure underpinning the service, which is about to be modernised, also offers the possibility to efficiently process the data and transform it into insight usable by a variety of user communities.

The talk will present the current structure of the service highlighting some of its more innovative elements but also offering some critical reflections on those elements of the programme that have proven harder to tackle and will conclude by summarising the key evolution of C3S within this new phase. A particular emphasis will be given to the role C3S will play in enhancing further its support to its downstream users, including  national meteorological services, national or international agencies or private enterprises operating on climate related topics.