Producing actionable climate change information for regions: the distillation paradigm and the 3R framework

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The issue of the distillation of actionable climate change information for application to vulnerability, impacts and adaptation studies in support of climate service activities (or VIA-CS) at regional to local scales is revisited. The 3R approach is introduced: robustness, reliability and relevance. Climate information for regions needs to be robust in the sense of producing statistically significant and consistent change signals based on multimodel and multimethod ensembles; it needs to be reliable in the sense of being based on a good understanding of the physical processes underlying the change signals, and on models capable of reproducing the functioning of the climate system at different scales; it needs to be relevant in the sense of providing information targeted for use in VIA-CS applications, including a proper characterization of uncertainties based on probabilistic approaches. It is advocated that the distillation problem requires an interdisciplinary consensus approach and a new generation of scientists acting at the interface between the climate modelling and end-user communities.