• Introduction to Climate Services

    In this introductory section to this course, we introduce the concept of climate services. The main objective of this introduction is to provide a definition of what is understood as a climate service. As you will see, that definition is very broad, encompassing the provision of climate related data, together with other data such a socio-economic data, and customised to the needs of users. These users are very varied, and we explore a number of “persona” as examples; the questions they have that are relevant to their livelihood or sector specific activities, and how climate related information can respond to that need.

    We discuss the climate services value chain, which identifies the different actors that are involved in developing climate related data, customising this to the needs of users, providing the services, acting and brokers, or translators, between providers and users, and finally the users themselves. This value chain identifies how each of these actors adds value towards achieving the value proposition of climate services. The climate services value chain also shows, however, how the local needs and knowledge of users need to start from the user to inform climate services provision and development.

    In the second part of the lecture, we dig a little deeper to explore what climate services entail, and how information these contain can be presented and communicated. This is very diverse, including data presented in graphs, maps, summary tables, indices and even in written texts and advisories. That there is such great diversity is of course logical given that climate services are tailored to the very diverse needs of users. Climate related data in climate services may be provided to cater for information needs in different “futures”. This may be the more immediate future, such as sub-seasonal or seasonal time scales, but may also be the further future such as decadal (ten year), or even climate scale (e.g. end of century) projections. We also show that as lead time increases, the timeliness of information may improve, but the reliability reduces (or uncertainty increases). This also underlines the importance of evaluating the reliability of the information climate services provide, and co-evaluating the value of the services to their decisions, while considering this uncertainty.

    In the final part of the introduction we discuss the barriers and challenges to the use of climate services, as evidence shows that uptake and use is often limited. We discuss three key factors that contribute to uptake; credibility, salience and legitimacy. The importance of integrating the local knowledge of users with the scientific climate data is highlighted and how this contributes to the three key factors of uptake, with a broad definition of what local knowledge is. Finally, we raise the importance of co-creation of climate services with users. This topic is discussed in more detail in a later lecture.

    Through this introduction we hope that participants develop a common understanding of what a climate service is and important factors around their uptake and use.