World Climate Services Programme (WCSP)

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World Climate Services Programme (WCSP)

Scope of WCSP

The scope of WCSP spans across four inter-related areas:

• Climate data and analysis;
• Climate monitoring, watch and prediction;
• Climate system operation and infrastructure;
• Climate adaptation and risk management;

thereby serving as the Climate Services Information System and a part of the User Interface Platform components of the GFCS.

These areas are implemented in two main streams:

• Climate Data and Monitoring
• Climate Applications and Services

WCSP contributes to improve the availability and access to reliable data, advancement of the knowledge in the area of climate data management and climate analysis, definition of the technical and scientific standards, and development of activities to support them in countries. Climate data management will include data rescue, development and coordination of a global climate data management system compatible with the WMO Information System (WIS). 

WCSP defines the associated products and their contents, develop prediction methodologies, including their requirements and standards. It will facilitate provision of regular global and regional consensus statements on the climate monitoring and prediction and tailoring and assessments of the reliability of climate products. The programme would establish and maintain research operations linkages to expedite the implementation of research advances in operational climate services and to ensure ongoing improvement to the operational practices and outcomes.

WCSP will put in place appropriate institutional mechanisms to generate, exchange and disseminate quality information at global, regional and national levels on an operational basis. In particular, it would facilitate the establishment of a network of global, regional and national entities, including Global Producing Centres of Long-Range Forecasts (GPCs), global data and monitoring centres, Regional Climate Centres (RCCs) and climate operations within NMHSs that would serve as key elements that develop and provide the climate information. WCSP will essentially coordinate, define, develop, strengthen and sustain this operational mechanism to produce and disseminate climate products and services and provide guidance on the requirements and best practices for establishing climate service programmes.

WCSP covers the near future to the long-term climate risks by promoting the use of reliable and available climate information, methods, tools and systems through interdisciplinary activities, initially focusing on the agriculture/food security, water resources and disaster risk reduction sectors. Over time, the methods, tools and systems will evolve to cover the requirements of other key social and economic sectors in collaboration with other UN agencies and other international entities.

Objectives of WCSP

1. To facilitate the development and implementation of methods to enable rescue, preservation and management of climate data by Members, especially developing countries, and to promote international exchange of climate data and related products;


2. To coordinate the development of global and regional climate databases including metadata, in both national and international repositories and facilitate their exchange;


3. To develop methods and tools for analyzing trends, anomalies, frequencies and extreme values;


4. To develop climate indices for assessment and analysis of their occurrence and attribution;


5. To coordinate development of a well-coordinated global system for monitoring, analysis, diagnosing and disseminating information on climate variability and change;


6. To identify state-of-the-art climate prediction methodologies up to decadal time scales;


7. To develop and support consensus-based climate updates and climate watches including both monitoring and prediction aspects;


8. To facilitate close interactions between operational and research communities to identify their needs and requirements;


9. To support development of methods and tools for operational climate predictions (seasonal, annual and decadal) and climate watch systems, assessment of their socio-economic value and incorporation of user feedback;


10. To build an effective infrastructure for seasonal to inter-annual climate predictions by facilitating the development of a network of regional and national climate centres and facilitate global to regional to national flow of operational climate information;


11. To facilitate definition, development and standardization of operational climate prediction products and promote standards and quality management;


12. To support development and implementation of climate services at the national level;


13. To support the interdisciplinary efforts to develop methods and tools for generating sector-specific climate information and products;


14. To help Members in developing climate application services based on the climate information and knowledge;


15. To raise awareness of climate as a risk and as a resource, and to better communicate climate information to specialists with limited climate background;


16. To identify and share best practices for the application of climate information, in order to develop user-oriented climate information, products and services through carrying out a number of showcase projects.

Technical Guidance for WCSP

The technical guidance for the WCSP is provided by the Commission for Climatology (CCl). It interacts closely with the Commission for Basic Systems, the Commission for Agricultural Meteorology and the Commission for Hydrology.