Going to Extremes in Weather and Climate Science and Services: Being Ready for Managing through the New Abnormal

There is growing acknowledgement among governments, businesses, and the general public, of impacts arising from a changing climate, and of the need for reducing and managing associated risks. It is also evident that traditional risk assessment and management strategies are increasingly challenged by the systemic and evolving impacts of extremes, variability and change across time and space. Characterizing regional and local uncertainties, and interpretations of extreme event characteristics and frequency impacts and responses, are key to effective adaptation and resilience efforts . These evolving challenges expose the need for scientifically and socially robust climate information prospectively “for” change, and to proactively inform navigation “through” rapidly changing environments. This paper outlines some of the relevant lessons derived from the history of such “climate services” and reassesses the nature of use-inspired integrated information systems bridging basic, applied, and decision-making frames in the context of evolving extremes. Events and associated climate services during recent droughts and floods within the Missouri-Mississippi Basin in the north-central United States, are used as illustrative cases to highlight the coevolutionary roles of (focusing) events and alignment and agility of weather and climate services practice during and between windows of opportunity. Numerous and diverse communities, subunits of governments, non-governmental actors, including civil society, local communities, and private firms, all play independent or quasi-independent roles in supporting risk management and governance. Developing a systems approach requires mapping the vertical and horizontal intersections of climate-sensitive impacts, behavioral and institutional norms, and decisions. Drawing on the cases, and an extensive literature on science, knowledge and services interactions, the paper raises the need to reframe the challenges of co-development and trust beyond the project and grant timeframes. Five action categories are identified in shaping a systems approach to readiness in weather and climate services: (1) improved detailed characterizations of extreme event dynamics and impacts, distinguishing between predictions and projections across the weather-climate continuum, (2) learning from significant focusing events and accumulated practices in risk reduction over time; (3) modernizing integrated information systems to increase agility and alignment during windows of opportunity, (4) taking the governance and alignment of risk-based knowledge to address societal challenges across issue attention cycles, and (5) the development and support of transdisciplinary professionals beyond translation. These service entrepreneurs keep the interconnected system, the network of players, decision-making norms, leverage points, and the larger goals of effective and equitable services in view and in practice.