Standardising climate services to deliver impactful change
It is estimated that investments of EUR 70 billion per year until 2050(opens in new window) will be needed to improve Europe’s resilience to increasing climate hazards. From engineers constructing sea walls to farmers selecting crop varieties, climate services perform a critical role. Transforming raw climate data – provided by Earth observation satellites via the Copernicus Climate Change Service(opens in new window), for example – into actionable knowledge and decision-support tools, climate services help us to assess risks and make decisions on everything from where to place sea walls to which crop varieties to plant. The need for climate services is unlocking new market opportunities, stimulating innovation and strengthening Europe’s long-term competitiveness in the transition to a climate-resilient economy. The downstream climate service market is expanding rapidly, with innovative companies offering a range of tailored tools to improve adaptation and resilience planning. Potential end users include urban planners, farmers, utilities and infrastructure operators.
Unlocking the potential of climate services for market success
“While climate services have been around for a while, the sector still feels like it is in its infancy,” says Climateurope2(opens in new window) project coordinator Sam Grainger from the Barcelona Supercomputing Center(opens in new window) (BSC-CNS) in Spain. “It is very fragmented, with many actors, inconsistent practices and limited quality assurance. This makes it difficult for users to compare services or assess their reliability.” Building on the Climateurope project, Climateurope2 set out to boost harmonisation of the sector. “This is an urgent task, as there are no recognised best practices,” explains Asuncion St Clair from the Det Norske Veritas Foundation(opens in new window), one of the project partners. To advance this field and consolidate existing knowledge, the project team harvested knowledge from existing literature, organised workshops and carried out case study work. “We looked at managing data, business models, and how to communicate climate information,” adds Grainger. “On the demand side, we looked at how the market for climate services is evolving, and how this interacts with policy.”
Facilitating market uptake through standardisation
From this work, Climateurope2 has formulated a series of broad recommendations(opens in new window) designed to push standardisation forward by defining common expectations for the quality, performance and usability of climate services. The project also produced a joint industry statement(opens in new window) to ensure that the needs and perspectives of innovators in the climate services sector are heard in standardisation discussions. The statement highlights the importance of internationally recognised frameworks and harmonised data formats across borders, to strengthen interoperability and enable scaling of innovative solutions. Climateurope2’s findings are already being used in the standardisation of climate services undertaken by the European Committee for Standardisation (CEN) and the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardisation (CENELEC) as a response to a request from the European Commission. “We can see that our work is being used,” notes Grainger. “As the project comes to an end next year, we will continue to ensure that our work is taken up.” The project team hope that the eventual standardisation of climate services will help drive the market for quality-assured, understandable and easy-to-access climate information, tailored to the needs of different communities. The team expect a suite of technical, procedural and performance standards for climate services to be delivered soon, with the first European standard expected in 2028.
