Users of the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) and the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), which are both implemented by ECMWF on behalf of the EU, continue to be highly satisfied, according to a survey carried out by the Copernicus User Support Team at ECMWF. Between 26 June and 17 July 2018, 259 CAMS users and 1,323 C3S users took part in the survey. The overall satisfaction rating is 87.5% for CAMS (an average rating of 3.5 out of 4) and 86.25% for C3S (3.45 out of 4).
CAMS
Compared to the 2017 survey, the commercial sector’s share of the use of CAMS increased from 18% to 22%, while that of the public sector decreased from 18% to 15%. Responses from EU-based users show a similar pattern: the EU commercial sector’s share of the use of CAMS increased significantly from 21% to 28%, while that of the public sector decreased from 20% to 16%.
Most users are aware of data provision, documentation and user support services. Users consider these services useful, with data access ranked most useful. All non-data services receive high satisfaction ratings.
Sixty-one per cent of all responses came from the EU. Eastern EU countries are still underrepresented and efforts to increase user uptake in eastern Europe will continue. The overall user satisfaction rating is the same as last year, which indicates that satisfaction with CAMS continues to be high and that there is no need for any radical change to the CAMS strategy and portfolio.
C3S
Most respondents (74%) came from outside the EU. This reflects the fact that global reanalysis datasets – the most popular datasets in the past year – have been widely used outside the EU. Among EU respondents, most are based in western and central Europe. Future C3S user uptake activities should consider targeting specifically users in eastern Europe. The growing interest in C3S from the EU private sector seen in the survey (15% of all EU respondents, up from 13% in the previous survey) is encouraging and suggests that C3S is on track to further diversify its user base.
Climate reanalysis data, comprising the ERA5 and ERA-Interim datasets, are by far the most popular and receive the highest satisfaction ratings. Many other C3S products and services are not well known, partly because products are still under development (e.g. seasonal forecasts), are new (e.g. the European State of the Climate report), or cater for rather specialist interests (e.g. monthly sea-ice maps). It is expected that this will change as the C3S Climate Data Store (CDS) is developed further and used more widely.
C3S released the CDS to the public on 14 June 2018. An open question in the survey asked users about their expectations. The replies included many ideas and suggestions for the CDS which are already part of the CDS roadmap, indicating that C3S is well aligned with user requirements.
Over 90% of survey participants gave the service three or four stars out of four, indicating great satisfaction with the usefulness and quality of C3S products and services. The current service strategy appears to meet users’ needs.
Full survey reports are available on the news pages of the CAMS (http://atmosphere.copernicus.eu) and C3S (http://climate.copernicus.eu) websites.