Sept. 27, 2022 — The Climateurope2 project kicked off this week, aiming to address the need for timely delivery and effective use of climate information. The event is being hosted by the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change (CMCC) in Lecce, Italy. The event today and tomorrow marks the formal start of the project, which will run from September 2022 until February 2027.
With funding of 8.7 million euros, Climateurope2 is a 4.5-year Horizon Europe project led by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center – Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS) with the goal of supporting the climate services community and proposing standardization procedures for future equitable and quality-assured climate services.
Climateurope2 aims to evaluate previously developed climate services and standardization practices. In addition, the project also intends 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 standardization processes for those climate services components that are sufficiently mature. Potentially it will provide quality assurance for all components of a climate service and propose certification criteria for potential user-friendly labeling. These contributions will promote the sustainable development and increased uptake of climate services.
“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,” said ICREA Professor Francisco Doblas. “Quality assurance, relevant standards and other forms of assurance such as guidelines and good or recommended practices when standards are either not available or not appropriate, and criteria for labeling and certification are needed at the supply and demand interface, both in the public and private realms.”
Dolbas concluded: “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.”
The main objectives of Climateurope2 are:
- The development of standardization procedures and recommendations for quality-assured climate services.
- 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.
- 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 platform will be also developed so that the climate services community can play an active role in the improvement and validation of the proposed good practices and guidelines.
This project will take place in conjunction with a communication outreach to support the European communities involved. The activities range from festivals, online events, art-science calls, roadshows, and museum collaborations.
The Climateurope2 consortium consists of 33 parties (29 beneficiaries, 1 affiliated entity, and 3 associated partners) from 13 countries that cover a large spectrum of expertise and capabilities, being able to integrate approaches from the social sciences and humanities to a wide range of technical expertise and climate services experience. The trans-disciplinary nature of the consortium will allow for the exploration of broad aspects of the climate services value chain and is indispensable for building a community of practice for the standardization and support of climate services.
Source: BSC