As the impacts of climate change become more apparent around the world, the call for a climate services approach to support adaption efforts has strengthened. Despite the goal of climate services being to develop outputs that can be used by decision makers, this approach has instead produced data tools that can be difficult to use or are not fit for purpose (Dilling & Lemos 2011; McNie 2013). Beyond the generation of new climate science tools or data sets is the question: is any of this information usable to decision makers? In spite of the availability of climate science information increasing in recent years, decision makers, especially at the local-level, struggle to use it in their planning efforts. The process by which decision makers engage with climate science is equally important as the climate data tool they use (Findlater, et al. 2021). If they are not able to incorporate climate science information into planning decisions, climate adaptation efforts, for example, those related to long-term infrastructure projects, will be delayed and increase risk exposure for communities. The goal of this sessions is to explore how climate change information is being used by state and local-level officials to help prepare communities for our changing climate. Presentations in this session should focus on the process of how climate change information is being implemented and not on describing new climate data tools.

References

Dilling, L., & Lemos, M. C. (2011). Creating usable science: Opportunities and constraints for climate knowledge use and their implications for science policy. Global environmental change, 21(2), 680-689.

Findlater, K., Webber, S., Kandlikar, M., & Donner, S. (2021). Climate services promise better decisions but mainly focus on better data. Nature Climate Change, 11(9), 731-737.

McNie, E. C. (2013). Delivering climate services: organizational strategies and approaches for producing useful climate-science information. Weather, Climate, and Society, 5(1), 14-26.