Challenges in Communicating. Climate Forecast Information to Decision-Makers

Abstract

Despite the strong dependence of certain sectors (energy, health, tourism, insurances, etc.) on weather and climate variability, and several initiatives towards demonstrating the added benefits of integrating probabilistic climate forecasts into decision-making processes, these forecasts are still under-utilised within the sectors. Improved communication is fundamental to stimulate the use of climate products by end-users. This study focuses on improving the visualisation and communication of climate forecast information, paying special attention to seasonal to decadal (s2d) timescales. As an example of a climate-sensitive sector, the renewable energy sector is examined. The overall aim of this study is to establish a communication protocol for the visualisation of probabilistic climate forecasts, which does not currently exist. Global Producing Centres (GPCs) show their own probabilistic forecasts with limited communication between different centres, a fact that complicates the understanding and consistency among products for the end-user. A communication protocol for both the visualisation and description of climate forecasts can help to introduce a standard format and message to end-users across different climate-sensitive sectors. It is hoped that this work will facilitate the improvement of decision-making processes relying on climate forecast information and enable their wide-range dissemination based on a standardised approach.