The European project Climateurope2, commenced this week with the Barcelona Supercomputing Center leading the project which aims to address the need for timely delivery and effective use of climate information.
Funded with 8.7 million euros, Climateurope2 is a 4.5-year Horizon Europe project with the goal to support the climate services community and propose standardisation procedures for future equitable and quality-assured climate services, solutions based on scientific evidence designed so that all sectors of society can make better decisions to mitigate or adapt to the effects of climate change.
To address the exposure to current climate variability, it is necessary to provide the best climate information in a timely manner, since it plays an essential role in order to achieve a green recovery and climate neutrality in Europe. This can be accomplished if climate information is adequately delivered and used effectively, and if it is integrated with other building elements to manage risks better and take advantage of opportunities.
In this context, Climateurope2 aims to take stock of the climate services and broader standardisation practices developed so far, as well as to compile basic climate information and trust requirements for quality-assured and science-based climate mitigation policies and adaptation options. The project will then use the collected information to propose a taxonomy of climate services and suggest community-based good practices and guidelines, proposing standards, and kick off standardisation processes for those climate services components that are sufficiently mature. It will pave the way to provide quality assurance for all the components of a climate service and propose verification and certification criteria that could lead to user-friendly labelling. These contributions will promote sustainable development and increased uptake of climate services.
ICREA Professor Francisco Doblas, director of the Earth Sciences Department at the BSC, an international reference in climate research comments: “Standards and quality management processes already exist for meteorological data and systems, established and governed by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), but these aspects have not been thoroughly addressed yet for climate services. Quality assurance, relevant standards, and other forms of assurance such as guidelines, good or recommended practices when standards are either not available or not appropriate, and criteria for labelling and certification are needed at the supply and demand interface, both in the public and private realms. This is fundamental to ensure that the services meet the agreed minimum requirements, and convey suitable saliency, credibility, and legitimacy, as well as to develop a robust and trustworthy climate services market.”
To this end, the three main objectives of the project are (1) the development of standardisation procedures and recommendations for quality-assured climate services; (2) the support of an equitable European climate services community, bringing together different actors of this community and a wider audience interested in climate services. As part of the project, tools will be developed and used to foster interaction, knowledge sharing, and market exploration; and (3) the enhancement of the uptake of quality-assured climate services to support adaptation and mitigation to climate change and variability by providing recommendations to make climate services more prominent, credible, and legitimate, as well as promoting confidence building between supply and demand. All types of climate services and market actors, both public and private, for-profit and not-for-profit, will be considered.
An interactive and user-friendly participatory platform will also be developed engaging the climate services community to play an active role in the improvement, refinement, and validation of the proposed good practices, recommendations, standardisation processes, and guidelines.
