Developing climate information portals with users: Promises and pitfalls

Swart, Rob; Bruin, Karianne de; Dhénain, Sandrine; Dubois, Ghislain; Groot, Annemarie; Forst, Emma

doi:10.1016/j.cliser.2017.06.008

Cited by 62 publications

(51 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…In such scales, model calibration and verification procedures are usually straightforward and provide adequate performance for modeling purposes. Moreover, the information provided to users needs to (at least) be reliable and precise (Swart et al, 2017), which is a challenge for continental and global services, since their setup is strongly dependent on uncertain open global data sets (Crochemore et al, 2019;Kauffeldt et al, 2013) and hydrological models that can only represent limited but dominant processes (Archfield et al, 2015;Bierkens, 2015;Sood & Smakhtin, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can Continental Models Convey Useful Seasonal Hydrologic Information at the Catchment Scale?

Crochemore

Ramos

Pechlivanidis

2020

Water Resources Research

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The development and availability of climate forecasting systems have allowed the implementation of seasonal hydroclimatic services at the continental scale. User guidance and quality of the forecast information are key components to ensure user engagement and service uptake, yet forecast quality depends on the hydrologic model setup. Here, we address how seasonal forecasts from continental services can be used to address user needs at the catchment scale. We compare a continentally calibrated process‐based model (E‐HYPE) and a catchment‐specific parsimonious model (GR6J) to forecast streamflow in a set of French catchments. Results show that despite expected high performance from the catchment setup against observed streamflow, the continental setup can, in some catchments, match or even outperform the catchment‐specific setup for 3‐month aggregations and threshold exceedance. Forecast systems can become comparable when looking at statistics relative to model climatology, such as anomalies, and adequate initial conditions are the main source of skill in both systems. We highlight the need for consistency in data used in modeling chains and in tailoring service outputs for use at the catchment scale. Finally, we show that the spread in internal model states varies largely between the two systems, reflecting the differences in their setups and calibration strategies, and highlighting that caution is needed before extracting hydrologic variables other than streamflow. We overall argue that continental hydroclimatic services show potential on addressing needs at the catchment scale, yet guidance is needed to extract, tailor and use the information provided.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Can Continental Models Convey Useful Seasonal Hydrologic Information at the Catchment Scale?

Crochemore

Ramos

Pechlivanidis

2020

Water Resources Research

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“…Climate-relevant information must be tailored to reach the right person in the right form at the right time. Neither does a unilateral supply-side push result inevitably in more useful information, nor does the availability of climate-relevant products guarantee their use (McNie 2013;Hauge et al 2017;Swart et al 2017;Wilk et al 2017). Reoccurring factors that have limited the success of provided climate information are (i) insufficient awareness by societal actors of their vulnerability to climate change; (ii) the lack of relevant products and services offered by the scientific community; (iii) the inappropriate format; and (iv) the inadequate business model, which is insufficiently adapted to the culture of users (Brasseur and Gallardo 2016;Bruno Soares and Dessai 2016;Bruno Soares et al 2018).…”

Section: B Classifying Climate Servicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Another example of good practice when developing climate services is to broaden the diversity of expertise involved in climate service production, including engineering, economy, social management, and communication. With a focus on the situation in Europe, the analysis of user engagement methods by Swart et al (2017) yielded valuable insights for improving user consultation and engagement processes, using such a multidisciplinary approach.…”

Section: B Classifying Climate Servicesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Scientific studies have highlighted barriers between producers and users of climate information (Moser and Ekstrom 2010;Dilling and Lemos 2011;Lemos et al 2012;Biesbroek et al 2013;McNie 2013), while climate service prototypes have been developed and analyzed to distill lessons learnt (Brasseur and Gallardo 2016;Buontempo et al 2018). The scope, content, and design of climate services have been analyzed (Lourenço et al 2016;Swart et al 2017;Christel et al 2018) as have specific products, such as seasonal climate forecasts (Bruno Soares and Dessai 2016), scenario platforms (Sigel et al 2016), or web-based climate applications (Brown and Bachelet 2017). There are also numerous studies of specific countries (Goosen et al 2014;Görransson and Rummukainen 2014;Máñez et al 2014;Haque et al 2017;Kundzewicz et al 2017;Vincent et al 2017), actors (André et al 2017;Wilk et al 2017), and sectors (U.S. Government Accountability Office 2015; Hauge et al 2017;Buontempo and Hewitt 2018) in contrast to the limited number of analyses covering institutional and governance aspects (Biagini et al 2014;Hakelberg 2014;Oberlack 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…So far, research has focused on producers (Kjellström et al 2016;Harjanne 2017;Räsänen et al 2017) and users of climate services (Cavelier et al 2017;Golding et al 2017a,b;Porter and Dessai 2017;Bruno Soares et al 2018). An undifferentiated discourse about ''the producer'' and ''the user'' is problematic: while a large amount of research acknowledges that different users have different needs, too often the research does not distinguish between different categories of users (Swart et al 2017). In practice, both groups are very heterogeneous, ranging from national meteorological services and research centers on the producer side to national policy makers, specific sectors, and the general public on the user side.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Evolving Climate Services into Knowledge–Action Systems

Weichselgartner

Arheimer

2019

Weather, Climate, and Society

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The current landscape of climate services represents a highly diverse and still growing range of programs, projects, and portals involved in developing and/or providing climate services at different administrative levels and spatial-temporal scales. The diversity of service producers, users, and policy arenas has created a highly heterogeneous data-and information-oriented service landscape, and the authors contend that the domain of climate services requires efforts toward agreed structures and forms of conceptualization, operationalization, and evaluation. It is proposed here that qualitative classification be applied into climate change adaptation products, services, and systems to better guide research, policy, and practice with a clear terminology and analysis framework. This differentiation allows the pinpointing of critical challenges associated with the production and application of climate-relevant information, as well as the identification of suitable metrics to assess the impact of climate services. The article concludes with recommendations to advance climate services into knowledge-action systems and increase their sustainability.

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