EGU 2026

Knowledge discovery in Earth System Science (ESS) relies on observational, experimental and simulation data being available for all compartments (atmosphere, land surfaces, ocean, solid Earth, biodiversity) of the Earth system. On top of that, leveraging the potential of large-scale AI tools and generative AI requires data to be interoperable in a machine-actionable, AI-ready way. Towards this goal, several research infrastructures are aggregating, structuring and distributing science data for researchers to be exploited and combined through a portfolio of services. Hereby, programs to foster these activities have been initiated by national as well as international initiatives, resulting in a colorful mix of domain-oriented, geographically-oriented, or target group-oriented research infrastructures.

Shaping the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), all of them share the goal of offering seamless access to high-quality and reusable research data and services following the FAIR principles and Open Science paradigms. We aim to implement this goal as a network of actors on both the national as well as the international level, making best use of the given opportunities.

The aim of the session is to foster the ongoing discussion on how to jointly shape the European research infrastructure landscape for EES driven by high-level and cross-disciplines scientific use cases and best practice scenarios.