Identifying research priorities to advance climate services

Enhancing national climate services: How systems thinking can accelerate locally led adaptation

<p>The Belgian expertise with respect to climate research is very fragmented and led by both federal (like the Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium, hereafter RMI) as well as regional scientific research institutions and universities. Furthermore, both in societal, research as well as policy context there is an increasing need for detailed, quantitative, reliable and consistent climate information and services, in particular linked to the expected climate changes and its impacts in different sectors (e.g. water, agriculture, energy, health, transport).</p><p>To make all this scientific expertise and climate information available in a coordinated and, above all, user-friendly way, a Belgian climate centre or a one-stop shop for climate research and services would fully address the needs. With its long-standing scientific expertise and service provision, RMI plays a crucial role in fulfilling this growing need for climate information and services.</p><p>Hence, RMI has elaborated a proposal on the creation of a Belgian climate centre. For the creation of such centre it is preferable to use existing collaborations from previous or ongoing research and service-provision activities in Belgium, requiring a structural cooperation in which each members’ expertise can be fully deployed. In the context of a previous research project, a large consortium of Belgian research institutions active in regional climate modelling, calculated for the first time a consistent set of high-resolution climate projections and sectoral impacts for Belgium. Nevertheless, it should be emphasized that the number of models used was far too limited to develop reliable information of the future climate. Moreover, this was a one-time project and there is currently an urgent need to update the climate projections to meet the new scientific requirements of the IPCC's new sixth Assessment Report.</p><p>One of the activities of the centre would thus be the coordination of the climate research based on scientific research projects. Furthermore, in order to ensure the continuous development and provision of climate services based on this objective and scientifically based expertise coming from Belgian climate scientists, the climate centre would carry out two main core tasks: (i) the production and storage of climate information and (ii) the support for the development of climate services.</p><p>The financing and implementation of a Belgian climate centre, would provide a structural framework for climate research and services, establishing partnerships with the various regions and communities, at both policy and research levels. In this way, RMI, as national meteorological institute and at the start of the climate services value chain, can guarantee a continuous scientific expertise and respond to the major needs for climate information and services at national and international level.</p>

There have been many initiatives to strengthen weather and climate information and services across Africa in the last decade or so, with numerous valuable outcomes. However, it is commonly observed that availability and uptake of information and services is still relatively low and that this represents a threat to social and economic development.
\nThe “mainstreaming” of weather and climate information into decision making is recognised to be a multi-disciplinary process involving components that include, inter alia, climate science and information services, translational science (developing appropriate communication approaches and delivery channels) as well as issues of governance to incentivise service delivery and use (as, for example, exists for weather services to the aviation sector). Considerable research has been conducted to improve capabilities in some aspects of these individual components, including pilot projects, generally of sub-national scale, to improve interaction and mutual understanding between climate information providers and users. The UN-led Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS) is now providing important guidance for new programmes and fostering and promoting government recognition of the benefits of climate services. However, there has as yet been no major large scale Africa-focussed initiative to comprehensively address the various barriers to progress in an integrated way and to consider also their interactions and dependencies. There is a growing consensus that this lack of a holistic approach lies behind currently limited progress in uptake of weather and climate services.
\nThe need for an innovative, holistic approach forms the central motivation behind DFID’s consideration of a new intervention – Climate Information and Services for Africa (CIASA1). CIASA aims to achieve a step change in use of weather and climate information in Africa by addressing, at scale and in an integrated and coordinated way, the very diverse barriers to uptake and use of weather and climate services. Current planning is for a 4-year programme (as Phase 1 and including inception) disbursing £35 million to operational and research investments. It is anticipated that further phases of CIASA may follow. In November 2014 DFID procured a Met Office-led team to scope, analyse options and support design of the CIASA programme. The team comprised weather and climate experts from the UK and Africa as well as representatives from the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), and experts in the fields of climate communication and development. This report presents the results of the scoping study and summarises DFID’s selection of preferred intervention options for Phase 1.
\nThe CIASA scoping comprised three main phases. Firstly, the Met Office-led Scoping Team developed a set of evidenced-based options for intervention themes and activities, working from DFID guidance in the scoping Terms of Reference and from the Inception meeting. Secondly, the Scoping Team worked together with DFID and other partners to refine the intervention options identified, develop a programme outline, raise options for a regional focus and to consider appropriate mechanisms of delivery and governance for the programme. In the third phase DFID conducted a formal appraisal, independent of the Scoping Team, to select preferred options for region, delivery and governance. Working on DFID selections, the Scoping Team then developed a draft framework for programme monitoring and evaluation.

The increased focus on climate change impacts over recent years and the recognised need for adaptation across society has led to a rise in the use of climate information such as the Climate Projections (UKCP18) in the UK. However, while public sector engagement with the Projections has been explored, there is very limited knowledge on how the private sector engages with and uses climate information to provide services to their end-users. The REVEAL project aimed to understand how these climate service purveyors use UKCP18 and other climate data, their relationships with both producers and users, and emerging climate information needs. For the purposes of this study, purveyors were defined as “Organisations beyond government bodies that use, enhance or add value to UKCP18 climate information to address specific users' needs.” Building upon initial Met Office research conducted in 2023 the project initially carried out a landscape assessment of purveyors in the UK who would likely use climate data and information. A total of 31 semi-structured interviews were then conducted with purveyor organisations to explore in more in-depth themes around: organisational and client profile; current and future use of UKCP18; barriers to using UKCP18; suggested developments for the next UK Projections; and wider recommendations for climate services in the UK. This study highlighted key findings around the expanding and heterogeneous landscape of purveyors in the UK, their perceptions and current use of UKCP18, the type of activities pursued and their clients, requirements for improving the next phase of projections as well as recommendations for linking up with other derived products such as the recently launched Local Authority Climate Service and Climate Risk Indicators. The study also offers insights into the expanding role of these intermediaries in the climate services value chain over the last few years as well as wider considerations on the governance of climate information and services in the context of climate adaptation efforts in the UK and Europe.

Climate services are on the cusp of becoming mainstream decision support tools. Many present accurate climate information within the bounds of scientific knowledge and technological development, yet some present climate information of limited “quality”, that is often “too good to be true”: i.e., scientific and technological constraints render it impossible to be as precise or as confident as suggested. This fidelity is rarely apparent when climate services are used to support decision making.Alongside pursuing academic and technological advances, traditional efforts to counter this disconnect (between what climate scientists know to be the boundaries of what their work shows, and the way in which climate information is used in some decision making situations) has focussed on two groups of actors at two different moments in the production of climate services. Most established is training users how to interpret the climate information, occurring after it has been produced. More recently, climate scientists have begun to articulate guidelines of how to produce “high-quality” information, for other climate scientists to follow during the production of climate information.We fear that demand for climate services will outpace the dissemination and use of good-practice standards. More positively, we believe the decisions taken to produce the data that underlies climate services could be made understandable for decision makers, making them active interrogators and providing a complementary route to counter the spread of meaningless climate information.For the production of climate information, we use the metaphor of a jigsaw puzzle consisting of distinct, interlocking pieces. We illustrate the importance of user context in framing the puzzle, and for each of the constituent parts (e.g. timescales, spatial resolution, indicators) explain the production process and suggest guiding questions those commissioning climate services should ask to probe the fidelity of information presented in climate services.

CR Climate Research Contact the journal Facebook Twitter RSS Mailing List Subscribe to our mailing list via Mailchimp HomeLatest VolumeAbout the JournalEditorsSpecials CR 47:83-94 (2011) - DOI: https://doi.org/10.3354/cr00950 Contribution to the CR Special: 'Climate services for sustainable development' Provision of climate information for adaptation to climate change Xianfu Lu* United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Secretariat, Martin-Luther-King Strasse 8, 53175 Bonn, Germany *Email: xlu@unfccc.int ABSTRACT: Climate data and information is central to understanding the risks of climate change and to planning for adaptive actions to reduce such risks. The multi-scale, multi-disciplinary and multi-stakeholder nature of climate change impacts, vulnerability and adaptation require effective and sustained collaboration between the providers and users in order to ensure the relevance, practicality and applicability of climate data and information. The Nairobi Work Programme (NWP) on impacts, vulnerability and adaptation to climate change was launched as a mechanism under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to engage stakeholders, facilitate knowledge sharing and collaboration, and catalyze targeted actions on adaptation. The NWP has engaged a wide array of stakeholders, providers, users and knowledge intermediaries for climate data and information. Through discussions under the NWP, Parties to the UNFCCC recognized that there is an urgent need to improve the provision and delivery of climate information, particularly in developing countries. Improvement in the availability of and access to high quality observed climate data and climate scenarios, practical guidance for the use of climate information, and the systematic documentation and wide dissemination of good practices in applying climate information to support adaptation are all identified as priority areas of work. These clearly defined priorities, together with synergies among relevant initiatives, represent considerable opportunities to enhance the provision and delivery of climate information and services, particularly within the context of the development and implementation of the Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS). KEY WORDS:Climate information · Adaptation · Nairobi Work Programme Full text in pdf format PreviousNextCite this article as: Lu X (2011) Provision of climate information for adaptation to climate change. Clim Res 47:83-94. https://doi.org/10.3354/cr00950 Export citation RSS - Facebook - Tweet - linkedIn Cited by Published in CR Vol. 47, No. 1-2. Online publication date: March 31, 2011 Print ISSN: 0936-577X; Online ISSN: 1616-1572 Copyright © 2011 Inter-Research.

Despite recent and mostly global efforts to promote climate services in developing countries, Africa still faces significant limitations in its institutional infrastructure and capacity to develop, access, and use decision-relevant climate data and information products at multiple levels of governance. The Enhancing National Climate Services (ENACTS) initiative, led by Columbia University's International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI), strives to overcome these challenges by co-developing tailored, actionable, and decision-relevant climate information with and for a wide variety of users at the local, regional, and national levels. This is accomplished through an approach emphasizing direct engagement with the National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHS) and users of their products, and investments in both technological and human capacities for improving the availability, access, and use of quality climate data and information products at decision-relevant spatial and temporal scales. In doing so, the ENACTS approach has been shown to be an effective means of transforming decision-making surrounding vulnerabilities and risks at multiple scales, through implementation in over a dozen countries at national level as well as at the regional levels in both East and West Africa. Through the ENACTS approach, challenges to availability of climate data are alleviated by combining quality-controlled station observations with global proxies to generate spatially and temporally complete climate datasets. Access to climate information is enhanced by developing an online mapping service that provides a user-friendly interface for analyzing and visualizing climate information products. Use of the generated climate data and the derived information products is promoted through raising awareness in relevant communities, training users, and co-production processes.

Climate services involve the timely production, translation, and delivery of useful climate data, information and knowledge for societal decision making. In order to create climate services for farmers that are truly integrated with user-centric design into the development process in an African context, the study has finished an important and crucial step by conducting a literature review and designing a prototype for the application. The goal of this study was to create climate services for farmers in an African context that are genuinely integrated with user-centric design. This led to the co-design and development and integration of a mobile application that provide climate and weather information as well as agricultural information for the main crops such millet, maize and sorghum. The research applied using qualitative research using interview with 3 farmers in the field using random sampling with the approach to inform the study. A survey has been administered to find out how people understand climate services, Agro meteorology and help enhance the mobile application’s user experience. A Results shows that farmers are determined and ready to use and excited with the application. These innovations helped farmers to reduce the cost, increase crop capacity and profit. A hypothesis was set that there is a need for integrating AI into a farmer’s application for making farming process more progressive and efficient farming and the integration of Market Place (MP) for farmer’s application to market and sell their product the integration of notification system that allows farmers to receive real-time data and IOT for real-time data. The data collected and the survey results demonstrated that the research objectives were being met. The study aims to develop the application that would be scalable, durable and fault tolerant for farmers to use the application successfully. KEYWORDS

Conference Statement: Summary of the Expert Segment

We consider the question of what is needed for climate services to support sub-Saharan African farmers’ adaptation needs at the scale of the climate challenge. Consistent with an earlier assessment that mutually reinforcing supply-side and demand-side capacity constraints impede the development of effective climate services in Africa, our discussion of strategies for scaling up practices that meet farmers’ needs, and opportunities to address long-standing obstacles, is organized around: (a) meeting farmers’ climate information needs; (b) supporting access, understanding and use; and (c) co-production of services. A widespread gap between available information and farmers’ needs is associated with entrenched seasonal forecast convention and obstacles to using observational data. Scalable innovations for producing more locally relevant historical and forecast climate information for farm decision-making are beginning to be adopted. Structured participatory communication processes help farmers relate complex climate information to their experience, and integrate it into their management decisions. Promising efforts to deliver rural climate services strategically combine communication channels that include participatory processes embedded in existing agricultural advisory systems, and innovations in interactive broadcast media. Efforts to engage farmers in co-production of climate services improve delivery to farmers and dialogue among stakeholders, but often with little impact on the usability of available information. We discuss challenges and options for capturing farmers’ evolving demands, and aggregating and incorporating this information into iterative improvements to climate services at a national scale. We find evidence that key weaknesses in the supply and the demand sides of climate services continue to reinforce each other to impede progress towards meeting farmers’ needs at scale across Africa. Six recommendations target these weaknesses: (1) change the way seasonal forecasts are produced and presented regionally and nationally, (2) use merged gridded data as a foundation for national climate information products, (3) remove barriers to using historical data as a public good, (4) mobilize those who work on the demand side of climate services as an effective community of practice, (5) collectively assess and improve tools and processes for communicating climate information with rural communities, and (6) build iterative co-production processes into national climate service frameworks.

<p>Despite recent and mostly global efforts to promote climate services in developing countries, Africa still faces significant limitations in its institutional infrastructure and capacity to develop, access, and use decision-relevant climate data and information products at multiple levels of governance. The Enhancing National Climate Services (ENACTS) initiative, led by Columbia University’s International Research Institute for Climate and Society, strives to overcome these challenges by targeting the way climate-sensitive decisions are made at the local, regional, and national levels. The ENACTS approach is executed by working directly with the National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHS) to build capacity for improving the availability, access, and use of quality climate data and information products at relevant spatial and temporal scales. The ENACTS approach has shown to be an effective means to transform decision-making surrounding vulnerabilities and risks at both national and local scales in over a dozen countries at the national level as well as at regional level East and West Africa. In the ENACTS approach, challenges to the availability of climate data are alleviated by combining quality-controlled station observations with global proxies to generate spatially and temporally complete climate datasets. Access to climate information is enhanced by developing an online mapping service that provides a user-friendly interface for analyzing and visualizing climate information products. Use of the generated climate data and the derived information products are promoted through raising awareness in relevant communities, training users, and co-production processes.</p>

A variable and changing climate where uncertainties exist regarding its future extremes requires better quantity, quality and accessible information that support planning and decision-making processes, as well as infrastructure that can take changing conditions into account. New advances in science and technology have provided higher reliability in climate information, more resilient infrastructure and better insights into managing climate risks and opportunities. New practices and tailored climate information and adapted infrastructure-Climate Services-would be able to accelerate and strengthen the process in order to meet the growing demands for useful and usable climate information. In the LAC region, a vision for the development and implementation of climate services has been developed with a vision of integrating climate information into decisionmaking in socioeconomic sectors, through an effective dialogue between providers and users on the range, timing, quality, content and delivery format of climate products and services. Developing and effectively deploying climate information and climate-adapted infrastructure is an important challenge for the water sector in the LAC region. An effective response to this challenge must integrate meeting the needs of the users of such climate services and building capacity in the existing and next-generation of scientists, practitioners, managers and policy makers. With this in mind, this paper focuses on information and infrastructure activities within the overall framework of climate services for the LAC region.

Poor access and use of accurate, timely and appropriate climate information consistently to inform decision making in African countries pose a huge dilemma for sustainable development. The existing climate data observations networks coverage are sparsely distributed. Development strategies and plans are not adequately informed by climate science due to the limited reliable and useable climate data and information produced by National Meteorological and Hydrological Services and other relevant institutions. This paper describes the climate information needs of Cameroon, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria and Tunisia, the status of the climate information systems (CISs), gaps and recommends improvement in the generation, processing and use of climate information. A study involving in-depth desk studies, key informant interviews, focus group discussions and policy dialogue was conducted. Results revealed that the CISs in the target countries have weak forecasting and alert systems for weather events and low capacities of stakeholders in climate prediction, development of climate products and information to support long-term planning, climate adaptation and resilience. The quality and appropriateness of data collected needs to be improved through networking, development and use of innovative technologies and capacity building. Institutionalizing climate data management training within climate data collection stations, creating modern real-time CISs by strengthening the capacities of national and regional institutions to use and disseminate climate information, is paramount. The capacity of the ministries involved in climate data management to deploy appropriate climate information and best practices to effectively implement climate-proof policies and practices should be enhanced to increase climate resilience and productivity.
 Key words: climate information needs, climate service, adaptation, mitigation, capacity

CR Climate Research Contact the journal Facebook Twitter RSS Mailing List Subscribe to our mailing list via Mailchimp HomeLatest VolumeAbout the JournalEditorsSpecials CR 47:41-45 (2011) - DOI: https://doi.org/10.3354/cr00959 Contribution to the CR Special: 'Climate services for sustainable development' Building sustainable regional climate information systems Rodney Martínez Güingla* Centro Internacional para la Investigación del Fenómeno de El Niño (CIIFEN), Escobedo 1204 y 9 de Octubre, PO Box 09014237, Guayaquil, Ecuador *Email: r.martinez@ciifen-int.org ABSTRACT: Regionally oriented services will be key elements within the proposed Global Framework of Climate Services, the main outcome of World Climate Conference-3. Regional services may be substantially different from both global and national climate services. This paper elaborates on some of the conditions necessary to develop and deliver sustainable regional climate information systems and services. The proposed approach is mostly based on 7 yr of experience of the International Research Center on El Niño (CIIFEN) in the western coast of South America (WCSA). Those wishing to design, conduct, and sustain regional activities should first accept climate information as a regional public good. Following this premise, regional climate information systems should (1) improve capabilities within institutions through collective action, (2) share knowledge and experiences on nation-specific benefits, (3) contribute to the reduction of asymmetries among countries, (4) demonstrate that a regional climate service can be enhanced as a result of improving national components, and (5) agree upon regional coordination mechanisms. The WCSA region has been able to implement a regional climate database, a regional group on climate modeling, climate-agriculture risk mapping, and statistical and dynamical seasonal-forecast systems. The development and uptake of climate services has been enhanced within government institutions, community organizations, the private sector, local authorities, and the media. The experience of CIIFEN can be useful to those starting up regional climate information systems. KEY WORDS: Regions · Climate · Services · Regional climate centers · Regional climate information systems · Regional public good · Western coast of South America Full text in pdf format PreviousNextCite this article as: Martínez Güingla R (2011) Building sustainable regional climate information systems. Clim Res 47:41-45. https://doi.org/10.3354/cr00959 Export citation RSS - Facebook - Tweet - linkedIn Cited by Published in CR Vol. 47, No. 1-2. Online publication date: March 31, 2011 Print ISSN: 0936-577X; Online ISSN: 1616-1572 Copyright © 2011 Inter-Research.

Assessing the usability and value of a climate service in the wine sector