The Global Centre for Risk and Innovation (GCRI)
Climate services turn observations, forecasts and projections into information people can use: daily forecasts, seasonal outlooks, warnings and climate guidance for sectors. A warning only works if it reaches people in time, in a form they understand, and if they know what to do. This page sets out how services and warning systems are organized, how forecasts are verified, and what evidence serves the services and authorities that run them.
Fig.Multi-hazard outlook. Design wireframe with placeholder names and illustrative values, not a record or a live system.
Climate services are the production and delivery of climate and weather information that people and organizations can act on, from forecasts and outlooks to warnings. A warning works only if it reaches people in time and in a form they understand. Authorised national services issue warnings, and verification shows how skilful they are.
For climate services and warnings, in GCRI's spatial-intelligence reading, the map opens on flood water, population density and true-colour imagery with a 15-day forecast chart at the centre, framed on World; 3 further NASA layers wait in the list.
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NASA GIBS / EOSDIS · ASTER GDEM (METI, NASA) · Blue Marble (NASA) · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL) · Natural Earth
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For climate services and warnings, in GCRI's spatial-intelligence reading, the map opens on flood water, population density and true-colour imagery with a 15-day forecast chart at the centre, framed on World; 3 further NASA layers wait in the list.Satellite and model products as NASA publishes them, each with its own date; indicators, not assessments of any place; claim ceiling INTEGRATED.
Layers and dates
Forecast-to-user pathways and authority. The dossier below sets out how the risk develops, what is measured, where the data come from, how it is modelled and who decides.
Observing networks, radar, satellites and numerical models detect developing hazards and forecast them. Lead time and skill vary by hazard, from days for cyclones to minutes for flash floods.
Warnings that describe what the weather will do, such as roads flooding or buildings at risk, prompt more action than warnings that only give rainfall amounts or wind speeds.
Warnings must reach everyone through broadcast, mobile alerts, sirens and community networks, in local languages and accessible formats. Gaps fall hardest on remote, poor and marginalised people.
People act on warnings they trust and understand. False alarms, unclear authority and conflicting messages erode trust, while drills and preparedness turn warnings into action.
Each term as this page uses it. Where a standard-setting body defines the term, the wording follows that body.
| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| Impact-based forecasting | Forecasting that describes the expected effects of weather on people and assets. |
| Lead time | The interval between a warning being issued and the hazard arriving. |
| Common Alerting Protocol | An OASIS and ITU data standard for exchanging public warnings across channels. |
Each indicator carries its unit, its cadence, the kind of source behind it and the evidence label a value would carry. No values are shown: a programme supplies them under its own authority.
| Indicator | Unit | Cadence | Source type | Label |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Forecast skill | continuous ranked probability skill score against a reference | per verification cycle | Forecast verification | OBSERVED |
| Warning lead time | hours between warning issue and hazard onset | per event | Warning logs and event records | OBSERVED |
| Population covered by multi-hazard early warning | percent of population | annual | Sendai Framework Monitor target G | OFFICIAL |
| Warnings in Common Alerting Protocol | percent of warnings issued in CAP | annual | Alert feeds and WMO Register of Alerting Authorities | OBSERVED |
| False alarm ratio | ratio of warnings without the hazard | per verification cycle | Warning verification | OBSERVED |
| People who received and acted on a warning | percent of surveyed population | per survey | Post-event surveys | REPORTED |
The topic as a computational graph: named sources feed the methods, an evidence review gates the outputs, and the decisions stay with the authorities that hold them.
Fig. 02Nodes carry their type, two metric rows and a state; connectors show what feeds what; dashed frames name the owners; the timeline is the cadence. Design of the pipeline, not a record of a run.
Named public datasets and institutional records, each with its licence class. Sources by agreement are used only under their terms and never republished.
| Source | What it gives | Licence class |
|---|---|---|
| WMO State of Climate Services reports | Status of climate services capacity by country and sector | Public, WMO terms of use |
| Sendai Framework Monitor, target G | National reporting on early warning coverage and risk information | Public, UN terms of use |
| WMO Register of Alerting Authorities | Official alerting authorities and their CAP feeds | Public, WMO terms |
| Early Warnings for All initiative reports | Progress on the four pillars of early warning | Public, terms per publishing agency |
| Copernicus Emergency Management Service early warning systems | European and global flood, drought and fire forecasts | Free, Copernicus terms |
Climate and Hazards prepares evidence. The decisions below are taken by the authorities named, under their own rules, and never by the platform.
| Who decides | The question | Evidence this page serves |
|---|---|---|
| National meteorological and hydrological services | Where to invest in observing, forecasting and warning capacity | Verification results; service maturity profiles |
| Civil protection authorities | How warnings translate into protective action and evacuation | Warning chain reviews; post-event surveys |
| Telecommunications regulators | How mobile networks carry public alerts | Warning dissemination coverage; CAP adoption |
| Development partners | Which early warning gaps to support | Early Warnings for All pillar assessments |
The questions follow information from forecast to action.
Forecast skill declines with lead time and varies by hazard: large-scale storms can be forecast days ahead, while intense local downpours are hard to pin down even hours before. Seasonal forecasts give probabilities, not certainties. Impact-based warnings combine hazard forecasts with exposure and vulnerability to describe what the weather will do, which people find easier to act on.
Warnings fail most often in the last mile: unclear authority, conflicting messages, messages that do not reach people, or advice that is impossible to follow. Trust is built over time, and repeated false alarms or missed events erode it. A single authoritative voice, consistent messages and clear actions are widely recognized as essential.
| Method or data | What it shows | Limits |
|---|---|---|
| Forecast verification | Skill, reliability and bias at given lead times | Rare extremes give few cases for verification |
| Warning chain and stakeholder mapping | Who issues, relays and acts on warnings | Formal arrangements may differ from practice |
| Post-event reviews | Whether warnings were received, understood and acted on | Rely on recall and partial data |
| Social and behavioural research | Why people do or do not act | Findings are context-specific |
The current service level is R0: information and enquiries. An enquiry receives a reference and names the next step; applications, payments, compute allocations and registrations open only when their team, terms and review capacity exist.