A climate knowledges approach to climate services

Abstract

The design of climate services can be improved by a wide variety of user input and understanding of needs based on perceptions. Here we apply findings from in-depth interviews of people whose daily lives interact with climate, weather and a range of natural resources. The interviews are meant to build a nuanced understanding of experienced climate knowledge, and while this approach cannot provide the type of data generated from user surveys, it can reveal local climate perceptions, challenges and understandings that can improve delivery of climate services. Resource users in Colorado’s Gunnison Basin recognize the importance of climate in their livelihoods and want information that fits the scale of their land and resource interactions and that addresses the most salient local and regional climate elements, such as snowpack, runoff, and the timing and character of locally-defined seasons. We also find elements included in local notions of climate that might not arise in a climate needs survey, in this case the problem of dust from a nearby desert region that accumulates on the local snowpack and affects it melt. These findings have implications for the design of climate services, including how local climate perceptions, knowledge, and issues might be better understood and incorporated to improve salience of climate information. The findings presented in this paper, while in some cases distinctive to the study area, can offer guidance for climate services in other contexts.