GCOS – the Global Climate Observing System – works towards enhancing and sustaining climate observations into the future, to provide the evidence needed to understand and predict the evolution of the climate, guide mitigation and adaptation measures, assess risks, enable the attribution of climatic events to their underlying causes, and underpin climate services and inform policy.

Our collaboration with GEO has strengthened over the last couple of years, thanks also to the iClimateAction project, funded by the European Commission. The project has provided a unique opportunity for GCOS and GEO to jointly examine their mandates, governance, and main activities, and has shown the different positions of both organizations along the data value chain, with GCOS supporting global coordination of climate observations and the development of requirements for the Essential Climate Variables (ECVs), and GEO working on the production of Earth intelligence, bringing data and applications closer to end users.

The GCOS’s work at the beginning of the value chain is foundational for ensuring that high-quality data, both in situ and space-based, are available to feed the models and AI tools used to deliver climate services.

We are looking forward to further collaborating with GEO.