GERICS supports quality improvement & standardization of Climate Services in Climateurope2

Climateurope2 is a 4.5-year Horizon Europe-funded project that addresses the need for timely delivery and effective use of climate information

The project aims to support the climate services community and propose standardization procedures for future equitable and quality-assured climate services, useful for decision- making in all sectors of society. The project started in September 2022. The Climateurope2 consortium, coordinated by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, consists of 33 parties (29 beneficiaries, 1 affiliated entity and 3 associated partners) from 13 countries that cover a large spectrum of expertise (see Figure 1).

Background & objectives

Timely delivery and effective use of climate information are fundamental for a green recovery and a resilient, climate-neutral Europe, in response to climate change and variability. Climate services address this through the provision of climate information for use in decision-making to manage risks and realise opportunities.

The market and need for climate information have seen impressive progress in recent years and are expected to grow in the foreseeable future. However, the communities involved in the development and provision of climate services are often unaware of each other and lack interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary knowledge. In addition, quality assurance, relevant standards, and other forms of assurance (such as guidelines and good practices) for climate services are lagging. These are needed to ensure the saliency, credibility, legitimacy, and authoritativeness of climate services, and they build two-way trust between supply and demand.

Climateurope2 aims to develop future equitable and quality-assured climate services to all sectors of society by:

• Developing standardisation procedures for climate services
• Supporting an equitable European climate services community
• Enhancing the uptake of quality-assured climate services to support adaptation and mitigation to climate change

The project will identify the support and standardisation needs of climate services, including criteria for certification and labelling, as well as the user-driven criteria needed to support climate action. This information will be used to propose a taxonomy of climate services, suggest community-based good practices and guidelines, and propose standards where possible. A large variety of activities to support the communities involved in European climate services will also be organised. During the lifetime of the project, two in-person Festivals (Venice, 2024 and Belgrade, 2025) and 5 online “Webstivals were organised with different topical foci to address the three goals of Climateurope2. Detailed information and recordings of all meetings are available via the Climateurope2 website.

Climateurope2 decided to structure climate services in 4 major interlinked components: the decision context, the ecosystem of actors and co-production processes, knowledge systems and delivery mode and evaluation (see Figure 2).

Role of GERICS in Climateurope2

The Climate Service Center Germany (GERICS), as part of the Helmholtz Centre HEREON, is involved in several work packages (WPs) of the Climateurope2 project and in the development of European standards for Climate Services. Main contributions in the project Climateurope2 are being made to the WPs on Business Innovation and Market Development.

In the area of Business Innovation, questions like: “What are important components that support the development of innovative climate services? What is needed for successful business models of Climate Services?” were addressed. Through a large set of interviews with climate services providers, a set of good practices and recommendations for successful climate services was identified, and an online training module on Business Innovation was derived, which is publicly available via the Climateurope2 platform.

GERICS contribution in the area of Market Development addressed questions like: “What are the criteria and indicators of (high) quality climate services? How can guidelines and standards help to increase quality, but also transparency and trust of climate services?” After an initial stocktake of the scientific literature, the quality aspects are further investigated by case studies, surveys, interviews, and community engagement to prioritize elements guiding high-quality climate services. The analysis encompasses all components of climate services, such as the decision-making context, the ecosystem of actors & co-production processes, the knowledge systems, information & processes and the delivery mode & evaluation.

The quality principles for high-quality Climate Services identified so far are discussed during the final phase of the project with project partners, and beyond, aiming to reach a consensus on the most important quality principles.

Results from the Climateurope2 project will be taken up for European standardization procedures. The New Work Item Proposal (NWIP) ‘Climate Services – principles, requirements and guidelines’ has been prepared and finalized in March 2026 and will be prepared by the working group adaptation of CEN/TC467 ‘Climate Change’ with the collaboration of GERICS. It consists of principles, guidance and requirements which have been developed in Climateurope2. In parallel, the CEN Workshop Agreement (CWA) on ‘Climate Services – Guidance for Co-production’ will be prepared by Climateurope2 members together with additional interested participants in 2026. This CWA can be the basis for further planned European standards for climate services.

The development of European standards for climate services was initiated by the European Commission at the end of 2023 as part of the Green Deal. The European Committee for Standardization organization, CEN (Comité Européen der Normalisation), established in 2021 the Technical Committee for standardisation CEN/TC 467 ‘Climate Change’. The CEN/TC 467 ‘Climate Change’ addresses requests about standardization activities towards the topic of mitigation and adaptation to climate change. The planned development of European standards for climate services will be prepared and organized within the committee.

GERICS is actively involved in relevant national and international standardization committees for the development and maintenance of standards according to adaptation to climate change.

GERICS activities within Climateurope2 are targeted to enhance the quality of climate services. Higher transparency and greater trust in climate services will enhance the value and impact of applying climate-related information for adaptation to climate change.