This paper explores advances in weather intelligence as an integral part of the digital transformation of society, enabling everyone to make better informed decisions to avoid harm and enhance economic productivity. 

Climate services comprise of climate model or observational data that is provided by scientists or authorities to stakeholders who use them in decision-making processes. However, providers and users typically have diverging expectations regarding the data. We here describe various aspects of the gap between needs and offers that were identified in two workshops in the Main River catchment (central Germany). To bridge the gap, we propose a framework that can guide future stakeholder dialogues.

We looked into how a numerical experiment represents the interactions between the air and the sea at scales of about 100–1000 km. We found that slight changes in sea surface temperature (SST) drive dramatic modifications in evaporation rates from the sea surface. Cold sea patches tend to cool down the air and to keep moisture trapped within the lower atmospheric layers. Warmer SST, instead, makes them more buoyant and inflate with drier air, thus diluting moisture over thicker air layers.