Fostering the development of climate services through Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) for agriculture applications

Abstract

To better understand and manage climate risks in climate-sensitive sectors such as agriculture, it is essential to have access to consistent and reliable data and information products. Tailoring these products to the needs of the users they want to serve facilitate informed decision-making and downstream applications. This requires an in-depth understanding of users' needs and the context in which these users operate. Considering the diversity of the economic sectors and their actors it is extremely challenging if not outright impossible to promote the emergence of climate services without empowering a plethora of intermediate users who can act as one of the steps in a potential long knowledge brokers chain that connect the climate data providers and the end-users. In this context, Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) has been designed around the Climate Data Store (CDS), a unique entry point to a huge variety of quality-controlled climate data and high-level utilities to process that data to develop user-driven applications. Through the Sectoral Information System, C3S has then developed a series of sector specific applications, which show how the infrastructure can be used to address specific users’ needs. This paper presents the key elements of the CDS and selected cases of sectoral application of C3S in agriculture.