About the GFCS
The Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS) supports, strengthens, and coordinates the development, delivery, and use of climate services to assist decision-making by addressing climate-related risks, at national, regional and global levels.
GFCS is a multi-government and multi-stakeholder partnership, including, but not limited to, United Nations agencies, international organizations, climate service-related programmes, donors, governments, non-governmental organizations, private sector organizations and national meteorological and hydrological services.
The vision as formulated at World Climate Conference-3 in Geneva in 2009 and adopted by an Extraordinary Session of the World Meteorological Congress in 2012 is:
To enable better management of the risks of climate variability and change and adaptation to climate change, through the development and incorporation of science-based climate information and prediction into planning, policy and practice on the global, regional and national scale.
The framework is built around five components, which represent essential elements of the climate services value chain/cycle:
- Climate observations and monitoring,
- Climate research, modelling and prediction,
- Climate services information system,
- Engagement between users and providers of climate services, and
- Capacity development.
The GFCS focuses on developing and delivering services in five targeted areas, which present the most immediate opportunities for bringing benefits to human safety and wellbeing, and are prominent as priorities in many countries National Adaptation Plans (NAPs):
- Agriculture and food security,
- Disaster risk reduction,
- Health,
- Water, and
- Energy.
The initial Implementation Plan of the GFCS had a 10-year horizon, and since 2023 the Framework enters a new phase to reinvigorate activities with the following goals:
- Strengthening climate service capacities and capabilities,
- Supporting authoritative science for climate policy and finance,
- Implementing the climate service value chain/cycle,
- Developing standards, quality management and training, and
- Improving visibility, effectiveness, and coordination.
