Francisco Doblas-Reyes summarised the objective of the meeting. He then offered an introduction to the Climateurope2 project, making emphasis on the standardisation objective and explaining what the role of NMHSs is. NMHSs is one of the communities that Climateurope2 is contacting to prepare the recommendations for climate services standardisation that will feed the family of standards that CEN-CENELEC has to prepare following on a request by DG-CLIMA. This meeting was a preparatory exercise for a longer online workshop where representatives from all the European NMHSs will be invited. This workshop will be part of a series of sectoral events Climateurope2 organises with climate-sensitive sectors and communities of actors to identify their interests with respect to the standardisation of climate services. A workshop with private providers of climate services had already taken place and workshops with representatives of the health (September) and finance and banking (October) sectors are already scheduled.
Asun Lera St Clair explained how the request for climate services standardisation to CEN-CENELEC has been developed by DG CLIMA and what role Climateurope2 played and keeps playing in its development. Standardisation requests are one of the means the EC has to implement policy. Climateurope2, following the liaison agreement with CEN-CENELEC to participate in the WG on adaptation of CEN-CENELEC's TC 467, has provided an initial definition of climate services and the four components that allow structuring the discussion. She clarified that these committees have representatives from the countries member of CEN-CENELEC, which hold the voting rights. Note that WMO has no representation in this committee, which is a relevant aspect for NMHSs. In parallel to contributing to the response to the standardisation request, Climateurope2 will use the mechanism of CEN Workshop Agreement to contribute to the standardisation process with ideas not necessarily included in the request.
Amir Delju explained that WMO provides strategic guidance and partnership to Climateurope2 to support the standardisation process. WMO's flagship activity is the development and implementation of GFCS, with priority sectors agriculture and food security, water resource management, health, disaster risk reduction, and energy. GFCS has been refocused in 2023, with five areas of attention: strengthening climate services capacity and capability especially in NMHSs, supporting climate policy and finance with authoritative scientific information, developing standards, quality management and training, developing the climate services value chain, and improving GFCS' visibility and effectiveness. Very relevant to the standardisation process, WMO develops methodologies and guidelines for quality assurance of weather, climate, and hydrological services and it encourages the interoperability of data systems and tools among stakeholders. In this role, WMO provides governance (mandatory for NMHSs) and technical publications, as well as general information publications. Amir offered relevant examples of the different types of documents. A particularly important one is Guidelines on Quality Management in Climate Services (WMO-No. 1221) because it covers several of the climate services components.
Nils Hempelmann introduced ECMWF's role in the project. The standardisation request is relevant to ECMWF because it hosts C3S. Although the main scope is Europe, as in WMO's case, the remit has become global, and so have its interests.
Aleksandra Kržič explained the role of the Serbian Hydro-Meteorological service in Climateurope2. Apart from contributing with their expertise as a NMHS, they cover the interests and experiences in Southeastern Europe, which is reflected in their central role in organising the second Climateurope2 festival. They have increased their focus on the user side.
Nicola Golding explained that the Met Office was involved in some previous work to standardise climate services as part of the UK Climate Resilience Programme. That effort identified the need for the professionalisation of climate services provision. They did not see a significant uptake of the minimum requirements formulated. Some reactions, both in the Met Office and the rest of the UK climate services community, involved the identification of who would approve the standards or the question of how it would affect the market, in particular for SMEs. The global implications of a standard developed in Europe was also discussed. She recommended to make sure that an effort is made to be inclusive to reflect the broadest perspective possible and to take into account initiatives like WCRP's Regional Information for Society. She concluded flagging the emerging role that AI can play in climate services, although there does not seem to be a clear perspective of its penetration and, even less, regulation.
Alessandro Spinuso focused on some of the climate data challenges. Climate services should protect research assets against allegations of data manipulation, enhance trust in the integrity of climate data, and support informed decision-making processes. Standards need to take the full lineage of the information to ensure that the product is traceable and, hence, credible. Credibility also depends on having error protocols and embedding provenance in all the tools used. The good news is that data provenance is part of the new WMO Climate Data Management Specification and FAIR guidelines are now followed by the IPCC. Open access to well-documented both data and tools is essential to guarantee this credibility, as the IPCC Interactive Atlas has illustrated.
Claire Scannell briefly described Met Éireann's work to develop their national framework for climate services. Met Éireann considers climate services across all time scales. They identified that there was little coordination among actors, no standards followed, and no consistent information and guidelines, in Ireland. Actors were doing something similar, but still different. The framework considers four pillars: community, data and information, quality and guidance, and resources. They started their standardisation effort by creating standard datasets for everyone to use in the framework and in the elaboration of the different climate-related reports and plans. The framework prepares a regular newsletter.
Sophie Martinoni-Lapierre focused on Météo-France's climate services for adaptation, which use climate projections prepared by the French community. These data, available from a couple of portals, feed a series of sector-oriented portals to respond to different climate adaptation needs. She mentioned the TRACCS programme that acts as a backbone for all the developments required for climate services in France. The reference datasets use multiple methods, large ensembles, and varied sources. They provide high-resolution data with high time frequency. The target scenario corresponds to a French warming level of 2.7ºC by 2050 and 4ºC by the end of the Century. The standardisation of the climate datasets is considered critical for climate services uptake via a more efficient communication, the generation of climate indicators that meet user needs, and the future sustainability of the products. She shared an example of the richness required for an adequate data documentation.
Andreas Fischer explained that the Swiss National Centre for Climate Services is a virtual institution participated by seven federal offices. This brings a broad range of expertise into the initiative. The Centre does not just focus on climate data but also on variables relevant to climate-sensitive sectors (forestry, hydrology, etc.). It has an ambitious dissemination strategy, producing documents oriented to specific sectors, and a web site that collects all the information generated. It has a cross-sectoral programme for impacts with six different projects (health, energy infrastructures, ecosystems, socio-economic scenarios, etc.)
Esteban Rodríguez presented examples of climate services in Spain. One was the estimation of rainfed cereal yield using seasonal forecasts. The other focused on streamflow estimates for reservoir management. The work is not standardised but the result of organic collaborations. A joint effort with CSIC is developing a range of climate indicators for ten different sectors.
Discussion:
Very different perspectives of what standardisation means and implies, with several experiences focusing on reference datasets.
There are valuable lessons from engagements with other sectors, like the April 2025 workshop with private providers of climate services. The use of the climate services components in the community interaction proved very useful.
NMHSs are climate services operators in the public space that develop products following the guidance provided by WMO, but many do not cover all the spaces that go all the way to the users. In this context, the CEN-CENELEC standardisation addresses all those actors that are not part of the WMO ecosystem. The question then emerges of what are the implications of these new standards for NMHSs and other public operators because the CEN-CENELEC standards will apply to all those present in the European market. Amir mentioned that WMO is not fully aware of these developments pushed by the European Commission. He suggested that it's fundamental to engage representatives from NMHSs and WMO in the process to avoid confusion among user communities with parallel developments for standardisation (from WMO's and CEN-CENELEC's sides).
Esteban considered useful to formulate the standards in terms of minimum requirements to assess the resources required to comply. He also mentioned that very interesting developments emerging from research projects struggle to make their way into operations at NMHSs because these institutions lack the human resources and expertise to offer them in a sustained manner. This also has to do with the resource allocation.
Samuel Morin (Météo-France) explained that there is a struggle to define climate services. He suggested to streamline in future interactions what can be considered a climate service so that the remit is clearer. While he considers data portals an element of a climate service, he expects climate services to be close to the decision-making process. Material from past and current projects could be used to illustrate what is under discussion.
Amir mentioned the existing WMO guidelines to define competences and skills of those involved in the service provision. He considered standardising human competences particularly relevant.
Note: WMO, ECMWF, KNMI, Met Office, and RHMSS are all partners of the Climateurope2 project and are often called in to represent the NMHSs' views.