Making Society Climate Resilient: International Progress under the Global Framework for Climate Services

Abstract

There is growing awareness among governments, businesses, and the general public of risks arising from changes to our climate on time scales from months through to decades. Some climatic changes could be unprecedented in their harmful socioeconomic impacts, while others with adequate forewarning and planning could offer benefits. There is therefore a pressing need for decision-makers, including policy-makers, to have access to and to use high-quality, accessible, relevant, and credible climate information about the past, present, and future to help make better-informed decisions and policies. We refer to the provision and use of such information as climate services. Established programs of research and operational activities are improving observations and climate monitoring, our understanding of climate processes, climate variability and change, and predictions and projections of the future climate. Delivering climate information (including data and knowledge) in a way that is usable and useful for decision-makers has had less attention, and society has yet to optimally benefit from the available information. While weather services routinely help weather-sensitive decision-making, similar services for decisions on longer time scales are less well established. Many organizations are now actively developing climate services, and a growing number of decision-makers are keen to benefit from such services. This article describes progress made over the past decade developing, delivering, and using climate services, in particular from the worldwide effort galvanizing around the Global Framework for Climate Services under the coordination of UN agencies. The article highlights challenges in making further progress and proposes potential new directions to address such challenges.

Water Conflicts: From Ancient to Modern Times and in the Future

“…The operation of functional and well-adapted institutions/organizations that could help this task by providing a better understanding of the climate-water-security-nexus via a systematic framework of monitoring, recordings, and/or elaboration upon climate variability, and the environmental and social-economy responses, is commonly accepted. This could facilitate cooperation and conflict resolution at a local, national, or international scale, and propose options to adapt to hazards originated from variations of climatic conditions, fundamental to sustaining human security [154][155][156][157].…”

Translational Science for Climate Services: Mapping and Understanding Users’ Climate Service Needs in CSSP China

“…Over the past decade, multiple initiatives, some linked with the GFCS and others not, have emerged, which continue the evolution of climate services to support disaster risk reduction, sustainable development, humanitarian preparation and response, sector-based planning, and climate mitigation and adaptation (Dessai and Soares, 2015;Street et al, 2019). This multi-faceted role for climate services aligns with the move toward greater coherence among these areas as reflected in the trilogy of international agreements: the Paris Agreement, the Sendai Framework, and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (GFCS, 2016;Street et al, 2019;Hewitt et al, 2020a).…”

Creating Useful and Usable Weather and Climate Information: Insights from Participatory Scenario Planning in Malawi

“…This is because the nature of information available does not necessarily meet decisionmaking needs, and the presentation means it is not always well understood by users in the agricultural sector. The field of climate services has arisen to meet this need "to provide climate information in a way that assists decision-making by individuals and organisations," as defined by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Global Framework for Climate Services (Hewitt et al 2020).…”