Abstract
A climate-informed and climate-ready world is possible. Large investments are being made toward adaptation and resilience to climate change, but many of those investments are separated from the more immediate climate-related vulnerabilities and opportunities that society faces. Information is increasingly available that could be used to guide action; however, information alone is not sufficient. Research at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) since 1996 has led to the identification of the several guiding principles to scope and address climate-related challenges to decision- and policy-makers at local-to-regional scale. These include climate-related information, such as assessment of the main vulnerabilities to climate variability and change in countries or regions, and the provision of climate information, products and tools to support decisions, including financial tools that are appropriate to the climate-related risk and that can mediate residual risk. The guiding principles also include identifying the technologies and practices that optimize results in coming years, demonstration of the usefulness of climate information to support climate-related decisions, training and capacity building, and partnerships for research and implementation. This essay introduces the evolution of the IRI and its work that is then elaborated through a series of articles that constitute a special issue of Earth Perspectives: Transdisciplinarity Enabled. The collection of articles provides insight into the science and process that lead to better climate-informed choices. Part of the collection of articles in the special issue covers specific stories of local-to-regional engagement with partners to address climate-related problems. Other articles represent how we do what we do, in particular highlighting the research, the climate forecast effort, and the IRI Data Library. Finally, there are two papers offered from partners that have long-time engagement with the IRI.
Highlights
A climate-informed and climate-ready world is possible
The Special Report on Extremes (IPCC 2012) concludes with high confidence that the dominant factor behind trends in many of these impacts is related to increased exposure of people and economic assets, which means that the impacts are likely to increase in coming years even in the absence of climate change
It is clear that what is needed is better climate adaptation – at all timescales, from weather, to interannual variability, to decadal variability, to trends associated with manmade climate change
Summary
A climate-informed and climate-ready world is possible. Large investments are being made toward adaptation and resilience to climate change, but many of those investments are separated from the more immediate climate-related vulnerabilities and opportunities that society faces. Involvement of IRI scientists in training and capacity building helps identify important elements of the problem like the correct entry points for influencing policy or decisions, or how to build effectively on existing approaches, or where the current scientific understanding and predictive modeling is lacking.
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