Editing IPCC:AR6/WGI/Chapter-12 (section)

=== 12.6.1 Context of Climate Services ===

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The idea of climate services is not new and has its roots in meteorology and climatology ( [[#Larosa--2019|Larosa and Mysiak, 2019]] ). It can be traced back to the late 1970s and the US National Climate Program Act of 1978 ( [[#Henderson--2016|Henderson, 2016]] ). The development of the Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS) after the World Climate Conference-3 in Geneva brought international attention and renewed impetus to the climate services field ( [[#Hewitt--2012|Hewitt et al., 2012]] ). As a result, large investments have been made globally and regionally in the development of user-driven climate services. WMO has created Regional Climate Centres (RCCs) to facilitate climate service development by regional and national providers ( [[#Hewitt--2020a|Hewitt et al., 2020a]] ). The European Union declared its ambition to stimulate ‘the creation of a community of climate services application developers and users that matches supply and demand for climate information and prediction’, giving primacy to climate services that are user-driven and science-informed ( [[#Lourenço--2016|Lourenço et al., 2016]] ), thus embracing concepts of co-design, co-development and co-evaluation of climate services ( [[#Street--2016|Street, 2016]] ). Diverse and action-driven international initiatives allowed climate services to progressively shift from mitigation towards adaptation ( [[#Larosa--2019|Larosa and Mysiak, 2019]] ). Opportunities for the development of climate services have emerged through the 2015 Agendas (Paris Agreement, Sustainable Development Goals and Sendai Framework), Nationally Determined Contributions, National Adaptation Plans, Multilateral Development Banks and Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosure (see [[IPCC:Wg1:Chapter:Chapter-1#1.2.2|Section 1.2.2]] ).

Scientific advancements in climate services related to meteorology and climatology are still closely linked to essential climate variables ( [[#Larosa--2019|Larosa and Mysiak, 2019]] ) and benefit from consistently growing computational power, infrastructure and storage capacity to meet the demands of higher spatially and temporally resolved climate information ( [[#Buontempo--2020|Buontempo et al., 2020]] ). Climate services also focus on impact chains, providing decision makers with information on climate change with cross-sectoral impact assessments for adaptation ( [[#Jacob--2017|Jacob and Solman, 2017]] ). Today there is a diversity of climate services that involve interpretation, analysis, and communication of different sources of climate data, ideally combining different types of knowledge (scientific/technical, experiential, indigenous, etc.), to a targeted group of decision makers ( [[#Parris--2016|Parris et al., 2016]] ; [[#Olazabal--2018|Olazabal et al., 2018]] ; [[#Pezij--2019|Pezij et al., 2019]] ). [[#Jacobs--2020|Jacobs and Street (2020)]] argue that climate services should be expanded to also address societal challenges, such as system transformation, that include climate in the context of other risks and development challenges.

Climate services are undertaken in public and private sectors at global, regional, national, and local scales ( [[#Hewitt--2012|Hewitt et al., 2012]] , 2020b; [[#Cortekar--2020|Cortekar et al., 2020]] ). Intermediaries such as private sector consulting companies, national climate service providers, research organizations, government agencies or academic institutions provide climate services that translate aspects of climate research to the specific context of decision makers (see also [[IPCC:Wg1:Chapter:Chapter-10#10.5|Section 10.5]] ). The EU Roadmap for Climate Services ( [[#EC--2015|EC, 2015]] ; [[#Street--2016|Street, 2016]] ) focuses on developing a market for climate services comprising of both public and private domains. The GFCS, under the leadership of several United Nations Agencies, emphasizes the public domain by supporting national and regional capacity building and development of climate services mainly through National Meteorological and Hydrological Services ( [[#Hewitt--2012|Hewitt et al., 2012]] ; [[#Domingos--2016|Domingos et al., 2016]] ; [[#Sivakumar--2018|Sivakumar and Lucio, 2018]] ; [[#WMO--2018|WMO, 2018]] ). There are ongoing debates about the commercialization of climate services (M.S. [[#Brooks--2013|]] [[#Brooks--2013|Brooks, 2013]] ; [[#WMO--2015|WMO, 2015]] ; [[#Webber--2017|Webber and Donner, 2017]] ; [[#Hoa--2018|Hoa, 2018]] ; [[#Troccoli--2018|Troccoli et al., 2018]] ; [[#Bruno%20Soares--2019|Bruno Soares and Buontempo, 2019]] ; [[#Hewitt--2020a|Hewitt et al., 2020a]] ). Some argue that the commercialization of climate services is needed to meet the diverse needs of specific clients and to drive innovation in the field (M.S. [[#Brooks--2013|]] [[#Brooks--2013|Brooks, 2013]] ; [[#Troccoli--2018a|Troccoli, 2018a]] ). Others argue that if climate services shift incentives for climate science away from the public interest towards profit-seeking, this will result in less publicly accessible and transparent climate information and more private knowledge ( [[#Keele--2019|Keele, 2019]] ; [[#Tart--2020|Tart et al., 2020]] ).

Some climate adaptation planning already uses climate information as provided by the IPCC. However, depending on the decision context, this information may be too coarse, too broad or too disciplinary to directly inform decision-making at the scale where adaptation measures are taken ( [[#Howarth--2016|Howarth and Painter, 2016]] ; [[#Nissan--2019|Nissan et al., 2019]] ). Thus, while the IPCC’s role is clearly perceived as that of a reference – an authoritative starting point – there is a need for complementary information to translate the assessments at the national, local or sectoral level ( [[#Howarth--2016|Howarth and Painter, 2016]] ; [[#Kjellström--2016|Kjellström et al., 2016]] ; [[#van%20den%20Hurk--2018|van den Hurk et al., 2018]] ; [[#Vaughan--2018|Vaughan et al., 2018]] ). The AR6 Interactive [[IPCC:Wg1:Chapter:Atlas|Atlas]] (see Atlas.2) does provide a collection of observational data and global and regional climate projections. It is designed as a climate service towards the needs of WGI and beyond, to assess the state of the climate by offering data, maps and a level of expert analysis by aggregation of results to regions, scenarios and warming levels.

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