The international effort toward climate services, epitomised by the development of the Global Framework for Climate Services and, more recently the launch of Copernicus Climate Change Service has renewed interest in the users and the role they can play in shaping the services they will eventually use. Here we critically analyse the results of the five climate service prototypes that were developed as part of the EU funded project EUPORIAS. Starting from the experience acquired in each of the

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... jects we attempt to distil a few key lessons which, we believe, will be relevant to the wider community of climate service developers. Crown Practical Implications The paper, which is structured around the experience acquired during the development of the five climate service prototypes, distills a few key reflections which should be of general relevance to a wide community of climate service developers and funders. The top level practical implications can be summarised as: The experience of EUPORIAS suggests that the interaction with the users during the development of a climate service cannot be sporadic and cannot simply occur at the beginning (e.g. service definition) and at the end (e.g. service evaluation) of the service development. Allocating sufficient time to the dialogue with the user and to the consequential change in the domain definition and scope of the services being developed is essential to the success of these services. On top of the objective benefits that users could gain from a climate services tailored to their needs, the access to climate expertise during the development of the service represents an important added value to users. Top-down management practices are not necessarily the most suitable for developing climate services. Adopting a flexible management approach (e.g. Agile) can be an advantage in an environment where changes in scope in response to users feedback are to be expected.