Climate services

“Useable” knowledge and information about climate change is crucial for climate action.

In order to be successful, adaptation strategies need to make use of the best available climate information, including assessments of recent climatic trends and projected future climate change that may be experienced in the years to come.

The climate information needed by local level communities and national governments includes how climate variables such as temperature and rainfall, and the timing and severity of storms and climate extremes may change. In order to be both useful and used, this information needs to be timely, high quality, relevant and accessible. Meeting these needs is the focus of an emerging field called climate services, which aims to bridge the gap between climate science, policy and practice for adaptation decision-making and disaster resilience.

This theme provides some basic climate science background, guidance for understanding and using climate data, insights for effectively communicating climate change, research and examples of how climate information can be integrated into decision-making across levels, and knowledge for the design, implementation and evaluation of effective climate services. You can use theTandem online guidance for the co-design of climate services tool to take an interactive journey through climate services resources on weADAPT.