Abstract
Climate services are intended to improve climate-sensitive decisions by making climate information ‘useful, useable and used’. Here, we analyse 27 expert interviews to evaluate whether this user-driven model of climate science has been successfully implemented in the public sector. We show that, although climate services promise better decision-making, they mainly focus on delivering better data. The norms and institutions of climate science produce three key tensions in operationalizing climate services: a focus on products rather than processes, services based on broad assumptions about demand rather than being demand-driven, and the narrow economic valuation of products rather than evaluation of improvements in decision-making. These tensions help explain why climate services often generate nominal changes in climate science where transformations are promised. Transformational change requires that climate services account for diverse social structures, behaviours and contexts. Integrating social science is no panacea for demand-driven climate services, but it is certainly a prerequisite.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals
Get Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription
$29.99 / 30 days
cancel any time
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 print issues and online access
$209.00 per year
only $17.42 per issue
Rent or buy this article
Prices vary by article type
from$1.95
to$39.95
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Similar content being viewed by others
Data availability
The interview data that support the findings of this study are not publicly available because they contain information that would compromise the research participants’ confidentiality and undermine the process of informed consent. The data supporting Table 1 can be found in the Supplementary Information.
Code availability
No custom algorithms or code were used in the collection or analysis of the data. The qualitative data were analysed in Nvivo 12 for Mac.
References
Hewitt, C., Mason, S. & Walland, D. The global framework for climate services. Nat. Clim. Change 2, 831–832 (2012).
Brasseur, G. P. & Gallardo, L. Climate services: lessons learned and future prospects. Earth’s Future 4, 79–89 (2016).
Lemos, M. C., Kirchhoff, C. J. & Ramprasad, V. Narrowing the climate information usability gap. Nat. Clim. Change 2, 789–794 (2012).
Prokopy, L. S. et al. Useful to usable: developing usable climate science for agriculture. Clim. Risk Manag. 15, 1–7 (2017).
Wall, T. U., Meadow, A. M. & Horganic, A. Developing evaluation indicators to improve the process of coproducing usable climate science. Weather Clim. Soc. 9, 95–107 (2017).
Dilling, L. & Lemos, M. C. Creating usable science: opportunities and constraints for climate knowledge use and their implications for science policy. Glob. Environ. Change 21, 680–689 (2011).
Tang, S. & Dessai, S. Usable science? The U.K. Climate Projections 2009 and decision support for adaptation planning. Weather Clim. Soc. 4, 300–313 (2012).
McNie, E. C. Delivering climate services: organizational strategies and approaches for producing useful climate-science information. Weather Clim. Soc. 5, 14–26 (2013).
Bruno Soares, M., Daly, M. & Dessai, S. Assessing the value of seasonal climate forecasts for decision-making. Wiley Interdiscp. Rev. Clim. Change 9, e523 (2018).
Nissan, H. et al. On the use and misuse of climate change projections in international development. Wiley Interdiscp. Rev. Clim. Change 10, e579 (2019).
Dutton, J. A. Opportunities and priorities in a new era for weather and climate services. Bull. Am. Meteor. Soc. 83, 1303–1312 (2002).
Miles, E. L. et al. An approach to designing a national climate service. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 103, 19616–19623 (2006).
Hansen, J. W., Zebiak, S. & Coffey, K. Shaping global agendas on climate risk management and climate services: an IRI perspective. Earth Perspect. 1, 13 (2014).
Hewitt, C. D., Stone, R. C. & Tait, A. B. Improving the use of climate information in decision-making. Nat. Clim. Change 7, 614–616 (2017).
Hewitt, C. D. et al. Making society climate resilient: international progress under the global framework for climate services. Bull. Am. Meteor. Soc. 101, E237–E252 (2020).
Lourenço, T. C., Swart, R., Goosen, H. & Street, R. The rise of demand-driven climate services. Nat. Clim. Change 6, 13–14 (2016).
Vaughan, C. & Dessai, S. Climate services for society: origins, institutional arrangements, and design elements for an evaluation framework. Wiley Interdiscp. Rev. Clim. Change 5, 587–603 (2014).
Weichselgartner, J. & Arheimer, B. Evolving climate services into knowledge–action systems. Weather Clim. Soc. 11, 385–399 (2019).
Bruno Soares, M. & Buontempo, C. Challenges to the sustainability of climate services in Europe. Wiley Interdiscp. Rev. Clim. Change 10, 190 (2019).
Daniels, E., Bharwani, S., Swartling, Å. G., Vulturius, G. & Brandon, K. Refocusing the climate services lens: introducing a framework for co-designing ‘transdisciplinary knowledge integration processes’ to build climate resilience. Clim. Serv. 19, 100181 (2020).
Harjanne, A. Servitizing climate science—institutional analysis of climate services discourse and its implications. Glob. Environ. Change 46, 1–16 (2017).
Kalafatis, S. E., Whyte, K. P., Libarkin, J. C. & Caldwell, C. Ensuring climate services serve society: examining tribes’ collaborations with climate scientists using a capability approach. Clim. Change 157, 115–131 (2019).
Vogel, C., Steynor, A. & Manyuchi, A. Climate services in Africa: re-imagining an inclusive, robust and sustainable service. Clim. Serv. 15, 100107 (2019).
Vincent, K., Daly, M., Scannell, C. & Leathes, B. What can climate services learn from theory and practice of co-production? Clim. Serv. 12, 48–58 (2018).
Vaughan, C., Dessai, S. & Hewitt, C. Surveying climate services: what can we learn from a bird’s-eye view? Weather Clim. Soc. 10, 373–395 (2018).
Dinku, T. The need for national centres for climate and development in Africa. Clim. Dev. 2, 9–13 (2010).
Webber, S. Circulating climate services: commercializing science for climate change adaptation in Pacific Islands. Geoforum 85, 82–91 (2017).
Pulwarty, R. S., Simpson, C. & Nierenberg, C. in Integrated Regional Assessment of Global Climate Change (eds Knight, C. G. & Jäger, J.) 367–393 (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2009).
Meadow, A. M. et al. Moving toward the deliberate coproduction of climate science knowledge. Weather Clim. Soc. 7, 179–191 (2015).
Fisher, S., Dodman, D., Van Epp, M. & Garside, B. The usability of climate information in sub-national planning in India, Kenya and Uganda: the role of social learning and intermediary organisations. Clim. Change 151, 219–245 (2018).
Daly, M. & Dilling, L. The politics of ‘usable’ knowledge: examining the development of climate services in Tanzania. Clim. Change 157, 61–80 (2019).
Carr, E. R., Goble, R., Rosko, H. M., Vaughan, C. & Hansen, J. Identifying climate information services users and their needs in Sub-Saharan Africa: a review and learning agenda. Clim. Dev. 12, 23–41 (2020).
Porter, J. J. & Dessai, S. Mini-me: why do climate scientists’ misunderstand users and their needs? Environ. Sci. Policy 77, 9–14 (2017).
Daly, M. & Dessai, S. Examining the goals of the regional climate outlook forums: what role for user engagement? Weather Clim. Soc. 10, 693–708 (2018).
Lemos, M. C., Finan, T. J., Fox, R. W., Nelson, D. R. & Tucker, J. The use of seasonal climate forecasting in policymaking: lessons from Northeast Brazil. Clim. Change 55, 479–507 (2002).
Findlater, K. M., Donner, S. D., Satterfield, T. & Kandlikar, M. Integration anxiety: the cognitive isolation of climate change. Glob. Environ. Change 50, 178–189 (2018).
Findlater, K. M., Satterfield, T., Kandlikar, M. & Donner, S. D. Six languages for a risky climate: how farmers react to weather and climate change. Clim. Change 148, 451–465 (2018).
Findlater, K. M., Satterfield, T. & Kandlikar, M. Farmers’ risk-based decision making under pervasive uncertainty: cognitive thresholds and hazy hedging. Risk Anal. 39, 1755–1770 (2019).
Findlater, K. M., Kandlikar, M., Satterfield, T. & Donner, S. D. Weather and climate variability may be poor proxies for climate change in farmer risk perceptions. Weather Clim. Soc. 11, 697–711 (2019).
Gerlak, A. K. et al. Building a framework for process-oriented evaluation of regional climate outlook forums. Weather Clim. Soc. 10, 225–239 (2018).
Gerlak, A. K. et al. The gnat and the bull: do climate outlook forums make a difference? Bull. Am. Meteor. Soc. 101, E771–E784 (2020).
Vaughan, C., Muth, M. F. & Brown, D. P. Evaluation of regional climate services: learning from seasonal-scale examples across the Americas. Clim. Serv. 15, 100104 (2019).
Perrels, A. Quantifying the uptake of climate services at micro and macro level. Clim. Serv. 17, 100152 (2020).
Lemos, M. C. & Morehouse, B. J. The co-production of science and policy in integrated climate assessments. Glob. Environ. Change 15, 57–68 (2005).
Bessembinder, J. et al. Need for a common typology of climate services. Clim. Serv. 16, 100135 (2019).
Lahsen, M. & Turnhout, E. How norms, needs, and power in science obstruct transformations towards sustainability. Environ. Res. Lett. 16, 025008 (2021).
O’Brien, K. Global environmental change II: from adaptation to deliberate transformation. Prog. Hum. Geogr. 36, 667–676 (2012).
O’Brien, K. Global environmental change III: closing the gap between knowledge and action. Prog. Hum. Geogr. 37, 587–596 (2012).
Shove, E. Beyond the ABC: climate change policy and theories of social change. Environ. Plan A 42, 1273–1285 (2010).
Klenk, N. & Meehan, K. Climate change and transdisciplinary science: problematizing the integration imperative. Environ. Sci. Policy 54, 160–167 (2015).
Atkinson, R. & Flint, J. in The SAGE Encyclopedia of Social Science Research Methods (eds Lewis-Beck, M. et al.) 1043–1044 (Sage Publications, 2004).
Larosa, F. & Mysiak, J. Mapping the landscape of climate services. Environ. Res. Lett. 14, 093006 (2019).
Acknowledgements
We thank our participants for their time and attention. This work was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (insight grant no. 435-2018-0549).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
K.F. designed the study, conducted the interviews, analysed the data and drafted the paper. All authors conceptualized, reviewed and revised the paper. S.D., M.K. and S.W. conceptualized the overarching project and acquired the funding.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Additional information
Peer review information Nature Climate Change thanks Meaghan Daly, Suraje Dessai, Catherine Vaughan and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.
Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary information
Supplementary Information
Appendices A–D.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Findlater, K., Webber, S., Kandlikar, M. et al. Climate services promise better decisions but mainly focus on better data. Nat. Clim. Chang. 11, 731–737 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-021-01125-3
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-021-01125-3
This article is cited by
-
New insights into projected Arctic sea road: operational risks, economic values, and policy implications
Climatic Change (2023)
-
Co-producing representations of summer rainfall in Bangladesh
Regional Environmental Change (2023)
-
Global survey shows planners use widely varying sea-level rise projections for coastal adaptation
Communications Earth & Environment (2023)
-
A modelling-chain linking climate science and decision-makers for future urban flood management in West Africa
Regional Environmental Change (2022)
-
Tailoring climate information and services for adaptation actors with diverse capabilities
Climatic Change (2022)