The aim of this project is to establish a coherent set of standards for climate services so decision makers can improve their capacity to manage climate-related risk.
Background
Standards are a key mechanism to guarantee the suitability, quality, and performance of technological solutions. They also provide common terminology between user, provider, and purveyor communities. The need for quality control, standards and certification for climate services has emerged in consultations with users during the design of the European Roadmap for Climate Services, as well as globally through the World Meteorological Organization. Thus, standards may relate to the content of climate services, how they are developed and how they are delivered or indeed the underlying datasets upon which they are built.
There currently are no agreed standards for climate services (although ethical frameworks have been proposed) and this project aims to address this need. Supporting the standards framework development is a need for developing and testing a methodology for monitoring and valuing climate service delivery and uptake.
Aims
The standards framework will apply to climate services for present day, seasonal and longer-term future timeframes. It will be developed iteratively for cross-sector applications involving users and providers of climate services.
This project is also developing and testing a methodology for monitoring and valuing climate service delivery and uptake, to see if it is possible to stimulate a market for climate services in the UK. The monitoring and valuing activity will use three case studies to develop a set of good practice exemplars on the valuation of climate services.
The project planned outcomes include:
- Climate service users feel confident that a climate service user group has fed into a new standards framework for climate services, thereby enabling more effective and informed decision making and climate risk management when using seasonal forecast and longer term adaptation services.
- Climate service providers have an approved, national standards framework to use when developing new services, or measuring existing services against.
- Climate service providers can benefit commercially by demonstrating that their services are meeting national standards
- Climate service users and providers have important information on the value of climate services that have been tested through the application of case studies.
The project is due to run for two years, to October 2022, and will involve widespread consultation with users and providers of climate services.
Outputs
Guidance on Valuing and Monitoring the Economic Benefits of Climate Services
Final Report on the Work and Case Studies on Valuing and Monitoring Climate Services – final report
Climate Services Standard – principles, requirements and guidelines, published 1st November 2022.
A pledge has been created to allow organisations and businesses to formally acknowledge their support for the new Climate Services Standard. Sign up to the pledge here.
A recorded webinar took place on the 2nd November 2022 to provide an overview of the new climate services standard / guidance.
A recorded webinar by the project’s lead investigator Murray Dale (JBA Consulting) and stakeholder representative Briony Turner (Space4Climate) was delivered on 2 June 2021.
Image credit: Agraham