1. The rise of demand-driven climate services Tiago Capela Lourenço cE3c - Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes CCIAM - Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation and Modelling Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa Encontro Ciência July 2017, Lisbon, Portugal 19. Clima e Ciência Polar

2. Introduction doi:10.1038/nclimate2836
doi: /nclimate2836

3. WCC-3 (2009) establishes GFCS
Background
Over the past decade, multiple frameworks and agendas have been proposed for climate services (CS).
NRC (2001)
WCC-3 (2009) establishes GFCS
EC (2015)

4. Background These initiatives have tried to keep up with:
An ever-growing knowledge base,
A more informed appreciation of the importance of climate for decision- making, and
Greater demand for all sorts of climate-related information.
However there are still plenty of questions left about:
What climate services actually constitute,
Who their users are,
How they relate to research, and
What their value is for innovation, economic growth and development.

5. CIRCLE-2/EEA/ISENES (2011) user needs workshop
Background
Transformation of climate- related data, together with other relevant information into customised products […] and any other service in relation to climate that may be of use for the society at large.
Climate services are expected to include data, information and knowledge that support adaptation, mitigation and disaster risk management.
(EC 2015 Roadmap)
Climate scientists: Earth system modellers, Earth observation experts, Statistical/dynamic downscaling >> Impact researchers >> Knowledge Purveyors, Consultants >> Societal end-users, Policy makers. Practitioners (Swart et al, upcoming)
Products such as: projections, forecasts, information, trends, economic analysis, assessments (including technology assessment), counselling on best practices, development and evaluation of solutions
CIRCLE-2/EEA/ISENES (2011) user needs workshop

6. Market development
Considerable market development expected in the near future, (much of it private to private, as in weather forecasting services)
Roles of public, private and academic sectors difficult to distinguish,
Assessing the value of these services (both public and private) is complex,
Comprehensive information about existing services is not readily available, suggesting that such a market may be growing slowly or not at all,
Alternatively, could CS still be poorly defined or not named as such by users, making the market particularly difficult to recognize?
CS are not simple business-oriented consultancy that will grow without public support >> still requiring coordinated climate research agendas.

7. Broadening concepts
If limited to providing access to climate data, uncorrelated to specific societal challenges and decisions, a CS market may indeed be practically absent
Decision-making is often more concerned with potential (climate and non- climate) impacts, risks and ways to reduce them than with raw or even transformed climate data,
Even perfectly tailored climate (change) information will generally be, with some notable exceptions, insufficient to properly inform decision-making,
Framing CS from the perspective of improving data accessibility (e.g. meteorological variables or primary impacts) seems now outdated.

8. Services and products KNMI
Communication by Bessembinder et. al. (2012) CIRCLE-2/JPI Climate scoping workshop

9. Terminology issues
Potential users (clients) are often less interested in long-term climate change (and in adapting to it) and more in managing short-term goals, e.g., business continuity (e.g. companies) or growth and job creation (e.g. governments)
These goals are interlinked with longer-term factors such as: regulatory changes, debt service and resilience to (weather related) extreme events,
CS must move to adapt to the preferred terminologies of its clients and use existing tools of common practice within user communities (vs. continuing to develop new ones from a climate perspective).

10. The way forward
For a CS market to develop, providers will need to adopt the terminology of their potential clients as well as understand their regulatory and cultural conditions,
A consistent research agenda remains essential to improve the understanding of climate change science, but additionally…
An intermediate (boundary) group of researchers and entrepreneurs will need to focus on use-inspired research.

11. Key messages
One might question whether CS are climate- or weather-related, and while this may be irrelevant from a client standpoint, it is still important for climate change research,
CS were initially focused on improving access to climate data but evolved into science-driven and user-informed activities,
To be successful, climate services need to move (faster) towards a demand-driven and science-informed approach.

12. Thank you Tiago Capela Lourenço tcapela@fc.ul.pt