The well-known adage "climate is what you expect and weather is what you get" clarifies the difference between the climate and weather. Climate information services prepare users for the weather they will actually experience.
Climate services provide climate information in a way that assists decision making by individuals and organizations. Such services require appropriate engagement along with an effective access mechanism and must respond to user needs.
Such services involve high-quality data from national and international databases on temperature, rainfall, wind, soil moisture and ocean conditions, as well as maps, risk and vulnerability analyses, assessments, and long-term projections and scenarios. Depending on the user’s needs, these data and information products may be combined with non-meteorological data, such as agricultural production, health trends, population distributions in high-risk areas, road and infrastructure maps for the delivery of goods, and other socio-economic variables.