A Framework for Joint Verification and Evaluation of Seasonal Climate Services across Socioeconomic Sectors

Assessing the information provided by coproduced climate services is a timely challenge, given the continuously evolving scientific knowledge and its increasing translation to address societal needs. Here, we propose a joint evaluation and verification framework to assess prototype services that provide seasonal forecast information based on the experience from the Horizon 2020 (H2020) Climate forecasts enabled knowledge services (CLARA) project. The quality and value of the forecasts generated by CLARA services were first assessed for five climate services utilizing the Copernicus Climate Change Service seasonal forecasts and responding to knowledge needs from the water resources management, agriculture, and energy production sectors. This joint forecast verification and service evaluation highlights various skills and values across physical variables, services, and sectors, as well as a need to bridge the gap between verification and user-oriented evaluation. We provide lessons learned based on the service developers' and users' experience and recommendations to consortia that may want to deploy such verification and evaluation exercises. Last, we formalize a framework for joint verification and evaluation in service development, following a transdisciplinary (from data purveyors to service users) and interdisciplinary chain (climate, hydrology, economics, and decision analysis).