In 2016 ERA4CS issued its Joint Transnational Call for research proposals on the topic of “Researching and Advancing Climate Services Development”, with funding from 12 Research Funding Organizations and 23 Research Performing Organizations from 17 European countries, and co-fund support from the European Commission under Grant Agreement 690462. 26 projects (out of 66 pre-proposals received) were supported, covering all aspects of CS. All projects included a group of end-users engaged into the co-design of a future CS. A team of independent experts assessed the progress of each project at mid-term and end of term. Four meetings of all projects were organized: a Kick-off meeting, a mid-term meeting, a final technical meeting and a final conference of presentation of results. The projects also benefitted from special training concerning the communication of their results to various audiences.
All projects organized public meetings to present their developments and the Communication team of ERA4CS boosted their visibility in large events, such as ECCA (European Climate Change Adaptation) and Adaptation Future conferences.
In order to facilitate their further exploitation, all productions of the projects are listed in tables according to a common typology (
https://jpi-climate.eu/document/era4cs-tables-of-productions-of-the-projects/(opens in new window)). This forms a 200-page document, with 772 productions of type A (text documents, including a majority of peer-reviewed publications); 131 productions of type B (numerical datasets); 54 productions of type C (software); 88 productions of type D (prototype climate services); 127 other productions. Among the type D productions, there are 31 prototype Internet sites, disseminating tailored information to a large variety of users, as well as 4 prototype mobile phone applications. Most of this material is in public access.
At mid-term, the projects decided to collaborate in editing a “guide of good practices for co-construction of CS with the end-users”, which is now available as an additional legacy of ERA4CS.
The ERA4CS partners collaborated to produce a number of reports for the benefit of JPI Climate: these reports map the activities of JPI Climate and similar initiatives throughout Europe and the world, and cover in particular the status of CS and the identified needs for further support in their development. ERA4CS supported two cycles of the bi-annual JPI Climate Scoping Forum, culminating in large Symposia in March 2018 (Paris) and December 2020 (virtual). Each if these symposia was preceded by a series of topical workshops. The “Workshop on Future Research Needs to support CS” (June 2020) produced a number of recommendations for Research Funding Organizations on how to target their support.
ERA4CS support to discussions with other JPIs and Copernicus resulted into the implementation of new actions, such as the “Joint call of JPIs Ocean and Climate on the Ocean and Climate Change” or the “Knowledge Hub on Sea Level Rise”. More actions are in preparation for the future, e.g. joint calls of JPI Climate with JPIs Cultural Heritage, FACCE and Biodiversa.
Finally, a pilot experiment of short reciprocal visits of staff of existing operational CS has been organized. The goal of such visits was to exchange between CS on operational practices and explore opportunities of cooperation. Six reciprocal visits were funded; all of them were highly appreciated by the participants, whose feedback will allow framing similar actions of larger size in the future.
