The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) mission is to deliver high-quality global medium-range numerical weather predictions and monitoring of the Earth system including hydrology and water resources to its member states for decision making processes. Challenges in this area include the integration of innovative observations into the Earth system; realistic representations of water, energy and carbon cycles; coupling and initialisation of all Earth system components; adequate representation of uncertainties; and supporting the development of user-specific products to enable optimal decision-making under uncertainty. ECMWF is also the operational centre of the European Union’s Copernicus Emergency Management Service (CEMS) providing Global Flood and Fire forecasting systems issuing seasonal and sub-seasonal forecasts. These forecasts, along with reanalysis and reforecast data, are now openly available through the Copernicus Climate Data Store allowing them to be input to other applications and used by decision makers. These data and service enhancements open numerous possibilities to improve integration with water decision-makings systems and processes. However, ensuring these forecasts can be used for such purposes is challenging due to the scale disconnect between a continental or global forecast system and the local scale at which decisions are made. Overcoming this challenge can be achieved by co-designing and optimising the forecasting systems together with the applications sector. This will allow to fully integrate Earth System and impacts modelling in the forecasting systems, thereby enhancing simulation realism. It will also to better tailor specific end products to user requirements and facilitate an improved decision making. An example is the TAMIR project which aims to connect flood forecasts to end user decision making through an impact matrix. This matrix combines flood hazard forecasts, derived by blending hourly radar based nowcasts and medium-range numerical weather predictions, with locally relevant exposure information regarding population and critical infrastructure. Continuous end user engagement ensures that the design of the forecast system remains relevant for their decision-making purposes. Another example is the recently commenced I-CISK project, which will tailor environmental forecast data to meet the requirements set out by end users. This project aims to build upon the wealth of existing data and services by incorporating local knowledge across multiple sectors, timescales and hazards. Working with decision-makers at every step of the project to co-design, co-create, co-implement and co-evaluate a range of tailored climate services that are specific to user needs, will help to provide information that is useful, useable, and used at the local scale. This will include collaborating with users to design effective forecast visualisations and undertaking user-driven evaluation to answer specific questions users have about forecast performance.