Copernicus Services, including the Climate Change Service (C3S), will provide information in close to real time using global and regional reanalysis outputs, as well as satellite L2 products. These outputs are not always consistent with their own climatology, because input data are not produced with the same quality at real-time as they are in elaborated climate data records.

Presently, the evaluation of the quality of Fundamental Climate Data Records (FCDR) (observations at radiance level that serve as key inputs for model-based reanalyses and retrievals of GCOS ECVs) is based mainly on isolated activities by individual research groups. Given the importance of FCDRs for all downstream data records, there is an important and evolving requirement to improve the assessment of FCDRs by utilising non-satellite reference measurements and model fields, among other means, for validation.

Recently established quality assurance and validation guidelines and systems are not sufficiently well recognised or understood in the global community, where validation purposes, methodologies, and results can differ significantly from one report to another.

Climate research and services have an increasing need to consider a large amount of observational data and model outputs simultaneously in applications. Because the data volumes provided by satellite observations and ensemble model runs have increased to levels that prevent easy download to local compute environments, there is an enhanced need for tools that provide functionality for data extraction, analysis, and visualisation at source or on cloud compute resources.

Presently, access to high-quality reference network data and satellite data is obtained through a variety of portals, using a broad range of access protocols, and the data files are available in an array of native data formats that lack interoperability (see Gap 1.06). There also exists a broad range of data policies from open access through delayed mode restricted access.