The European Climate Service Partnership (ECSP) was officially launched in Hamburg on 7th May 2014 in the presence of over 70 participants (Alessio Bellucci and Eva Banos de Guisasola from SERC Division represented CMCC). It was hosted by the Climate Service Center (CSC) in Hamburg.
ECSP has been set up to: 1) encourage membership from a wide range of active climate service actors; 2) ensure climate service in Europe are joined up and ensure Europe has coordinated international reach through the Climate Service Partnership led by IRI; 3) forum for discussion, promote collaboration; 4) use different disciplines and cultures; 5) create and share knowledge and resources.
ECSP is open to all actors in Europe involved actively in climate services, it does not have deliverables, it will not duplicate existing activities and will evolve to reflect members’ needs.
Guy Brasseur from CSC opened the meeting presenting where are we today on climate services and the idea behind this initiative. He highlighted the importance on transformation of climate related data into customized products and the difficulties of communicating with the end users. Two new aspects to bring in now are disaster risk management and climate change adaptation.
Claus Bruning from DG Research & Innovation updated the group on EU climate modelling group (ECOMS), upcoming calls, ERANET on climate service. Commission welcomed this new umbrella in the EU as it includes, in a flexible functioning way all the related EU initiatives on climate.
Chris Hewitt from Met Office (UK), presented how the ECSP concept has evolved since the first discussions started at the second international conference on climate change in Brussels in 2012. Now, ECSP has agreed to start working on four important issues which will be discussed in the new set up working groups: market development of climate services; risk management; quality control for climate services and best practice and climate communication. It will be run by a small secretariat at the Met Office (UK) and supported by a steering committee (of which CMCC is part of).
The most immediate action will be the holding of a workshop on communication next Autumn and the first ECSP annual meeting in May 2015 hosted by Met Office in the UK.

More information is available here: http://www.climate-services.org/

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