Editing IPCC:AR6/WGI/Chapter-10 (section)

=== FAQ 10.1 | How Can We Provide Useful Climate Information for Regional Stakeholders? ===

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The world is physically and culturally diverse, and the challenges posed by climate change vary by region and location. Because climate change affects so many aspects of people’s daily work and living, climate change information can help with decision-making, but only when the information is relevant for the people involved in making those decisions. Users of climate information may be highly diverse, ranging from professionals in areas such as human health, agriculture or water management to a broader community that experiences the impacts of changing climate. Providing information that supports response actions thus requires engaging all relevant stakeholders, their knowledge and their experiences, formulating appropriate information, and developing a mutual understanding of the usefulness and limitations of the information.

The development, delivery, and use of climate change information requires engaging all parties involved: those producing the climate data and related knowledge, those communicating it, and those who combine that information with their knowledge of the community, region or activity that climate change may impact. To be successful, these parties need to work together to explore the climate data and thus co-develop the climate information needed to make decisions or solve problems, distilling output from the various sources of climate knowledge into relevant climate information. Effective partnerships recognize and respond to the diversity of all parties involved (including their values, beliefs and interests), especially when they involve culturally diverse communities and their indigenous and local knowledge of weather, climate and their society. This is particularly true for climate change – a global issue posing challenges that vary by region. By recognizing this diversity, climate information can be relevant and credible, most notably when conveying the complexity of risks for human systems and ecosystems and for building resilience.

Constructing useful climate information requires considering all available sources in order to capture the fullest possible representation of projected changes and distilling the information in a way that meets the needs of the stakeholders and communities impacted by the changes. For example, climate scientists can provide information on future changes by using simulations of global and/or regional climate and inferring changes in the weather behaviour influencing a region. An effective distillation process (FAQ 10.1, Figure 1) engages with the intended recipients of the information, especially stakeholders whose work involves non-climatic factors, such as human health, agriculture or water resources. The distillation evaluates the accuracy of all information sources (observations, simulations, expert judgement), weighs the credibility of possible conflicting information, and arrives at climate information that includes estimating the confidence a user should have in it. Producers of climate data should further recognize that the geographic regions and time periods governing stakeholders’ interest (for example, the growing season of an agricultural zone) may not align well with the time and space resolution of available climate data; thus additional model development or data processing may be required to extract useful climate information.

One way to distil complex information for stakeholder applications is to connect this information to experiences stakeholders have already had through storylines as plausible unfoldings of weather and climate events related to stakeholders’ experiences. Dialogue between stakeholders and climate scientists can determine the most relevant experiences to evaluate for possible future behaviour. The development of storylines uses the experience and expertise of stakeholders, such as water-resource managers and health professionals, who seek to develop appropriate response measures. Storylines are thus a pathway through the distillation process that can make climate information more accessible and physically comprehensible. For example, a storyline may take a common experience like an extended drought, with depleted water availability and damaged crops, and show how droughts may change in the future, perhaps with even greater precipitation deficits or longer duration. With appropriate choices, storylines can engage nuances of the climate information in a meaningful way by building on common experiences, thus enhancing the information’s usefulness.

Forging partnerships among all involved with producing, exploring and distilling climate data into climate information is at the centre of creating stakeholder-relevant information. These partnerships can occur through direct interaction between climate scientists and stakeholders as well as through organizations that have emerged to facilitate this process, such as climate services, national and regional climate forums, and consulting firms providing specialized climate information. These so-called ‘boundary organizations’ can serve the varied needs of all who would fold climate information into their decision processes. All of these partnerships are vital

for arriving at climate information that responds to physical and cultural diversity and to challenges posed by climate change that can vary region-by-region around the world.

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'''FAQ 10.1, Figure 1''' '''|''' '''Climate information for decision makers is more useful if the physical and cultural diversity across the world is considered.''' The figure illustrates schematically the broad range of knowledge that must be blended with the diversity of users to distil information that will have relevance and credibility. This blending or distillation should engage the values and knowledge of both the stakeholders and the scientists. The bottom row contains examples of stakeholders’ interests and is not all-inclusive. As part of the distillation, the outcomes can advance the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, covered in part by these examples.

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