Climate services development process
A climate-service is a user-friendly representation derived from climate information (past, present, seasonal or future) that assists individuals and organizations or communities to make improved decisions. It requires appropriate and iterative engagement to produce a timely advisory that end-users can comprehend, and which can aid their decision-making and enable early action and preparedness. The effective development and use of climate services can serve as a valuable aid to decision-making in many economic and social sectors.
The climate service development process is a multi-step approach and requires
multidisciplinary and cross-sector collaboration between technical experts and end-users. Every step should be tailored towards the needs of the specific application or the end users. Different types of experts might assist during the process, such as sector-specific experts (i.e., useful in the selection of variables to be analysed), climate experts and impact experts. Timescales are key in understanding climate services and end-users should select the temporal scale that fits their needs (i.e., past climate, current weather, seasonal forecast, climate change projections). Moreover, knowledge of what variables/indicators will drive impact and risk is required at the start of the process and for the final calculations.
The climate service development process follows three main phases:
Data acquisition
Collection of climate data, earth observation data, physical or geographical data (i.e., rainfall, projections, land-use, temperatures, demographic data, health trends). There is a huge wealth of data and information available at different scales. Depending on the expected service, climate data can be combined with socio-economic data, such as demographic indicators, health trends, social vulnerabilities etc.
Data processing
Analysis of the data. It is critical that all variables and indicators used are well understood by all end-users and the information produced targets their expressed needs.
Delivering outcomes
The data and information is transformed into customized products such as projections, trends, economic analysis and services for different user communities.
The co-production cycle can be simpler or more complex depending on several factors, such as the complexity of the data and tools used, the level of knowledge of the users, or methodological gaps. In all cases, stakeholder engagement and co-creation should run in parallel. For example, the Global Framework for Climate Services provides a 5-step approach to climate service delivery, emphasizing the importance of finding common ground and ensuring proper understanding and communication of these services:
1. Understand the demand side
2. Bridging the gap between climate science and sector expertise
3. Co-producing climate services to address end-user climate service needs
4. Communicate to reach the ‘last mile’
5. Monitoring and evaluation.
In the REACHOUT project, the co-creation process was structured around the three phases of Ideation, Co-production and Co-delivery. In this approach, the cycle is considered finished only once the end-users validate the final tool or service and this is co-delivered in local contexts.
Summary
Reflection
- What kind of stakeholders should be engaged in the climate service development process? At which stage?
2. How can the climate service development process be structured?
3. How should the communication with stakeholders and end-users take place during the development process?
