Integrating Climate Science, Information, and Services at Multiple Scales: International Lessons from the Global to Local and Back Up the Value Chain

Climate has no national boundaries. Multiple international and national assessments note that risk governance in the 21st century requires coherent actions across disaster risk reduction and climate adaptation at multiple scales. It increasingly clear that the cascading and compounding nature of extremes and impacts that cross global, regional, national and local scales are fundamental in driving accumulated and emerging climate-related risks. Indeed, these and others assessments show that without development of reliable knowledge, information systems, and governance, achieving the goals of Paris Agreement on climate change, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030, the UN Convention on Biodiversity and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals will remain elusive for countries and communities across the world. Systematic, coordinated approaches to climate services such as the UN Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS) and recently launched Early Warning For All Initiative can help enable the development, quality-assurance, accessibility, stakeholder engagement, and knowledge exchanges needed to support decision-making, from disaster risk reduction to resilient infrastructure development. To meet these demands, the GFCS Climate Services Information System has focused on international, regional and national and local systems that integrate (1) improvements in monitoring and prediction at different levels, (2) targeted support for sharing information, decision support tools and best practices, and (3) coordination and capacity needed for informing proactive risk reduction. Drawing on these and other experiences (such as through Copernicus Climate Service, the Caribbean Regional Climate Center, FEWSNet) across several countries to date, the presentation will discuss:

• What is meant by and what does it take to be “climate-ready”?
• What integrated information systems development and implementation efforts are being undertaken?
• How are these measured and what is being learned?
• What climate services entry points exist for improving governance for both risk and resilience?
• What additional areas of use-inspired research and capabilities are needed?

We will address recent evolutions in thought and practice within the Global Framework and in national frameworks for climate services in WMO -member countries, including through the Early Warning 4 All initiative. In addition, we will identify the flow of lessons from and their potential contributions to US-based climate services development (e.g. through the FTAC), and articulation of benefits to US International interests, identified in recently-released Fifth National Climate Assessment. A key issue to be addressed is how the combination of these advances and improved governance of climate services may be better aligned to realize the co-benefits of resilience across society, economies and ecosystems in creating climate readiness.