Browsing by Author "Hewitson, Bruce"
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- ItemClimate information websites: an evolving landscape(Malden, MA : Wiley-Blackwell, 2017) Hewitson, Bruce; Waagsaether, Katinka; Wohland, Jan; Kloppers, Kate; Kara, TeizeenThe climate change agenda is populated by actors and agencies with different objectives, values, and motivations, yet many seek decision scale climate information to inform policy and adaptation responses. A central element of this network of activity is the climate information website (CIW) that has seen a rapid and organic growth, yet with variable content and quality, and unfettered by any code of practice. This builds an ethical–epistemic dilemma that warrants assessment as the presence of CIWs contribute to real-world consequences and commitment. This study considers the context of CIW growth, and reviews a representative sample of CIWs to draw out key issues for consideration in CIW development. We assess content, function, and use-case value through a dual approach of a typology and user experience narratives to evaluate the general efficacy of a CIW. The typology reveals strong contrasts in content, complicated interfaces, and an overload of choice making it difficult to converge on a stable outcome. The narratives capture user experience and highlight barriers that include navigation difficulties, jargon laden content, minimal or opaque guidance, and inferred information without context about uncertainty and limits to skill. This illuminates four concerns: (1) the ethics of information provision in a context of real-world consequences; (2) interfaces that present barriers to achieving robust solutions; (3) weak capacity of both users and providers to identify information of value from the multimodel and multimethod data; and (4) inclusion of data that infer skill. Nonetheless, results provide a positive indication of a community of practice that is still maturing. WIREs Clim Change 2017, 8:e470. doi: 10.1002/wcc.470. For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.
- ItemThe Vulnerability, Impacts, Adaptation and Climate Services Advisory Board (VIACS AB v1.0) contribution to CMIP6(München : European Geopyhsical Union, 2016) Ruane, Alex C.; Teichmann, Claas; Arnell, Nigel W.; Carter, Timothy R.; Ebi, Kristie L.; Frieler, Katja; Goodess, Clare M.; Hewitson, Bruce; Horton, Radley; Kovats, R. Sari; Lotze, Heike K.; Mearns, Linda O.; Navarra, Antonio; Ojima, Dennis S.; Riahi, Keywan; Rosenzweig, Cynthia; Themessl, Matthias; Vincent, KatharineThis paper describes the motivation for the creation of the Vulnerability, Impacts, Adaptation and Climate Services (VIACS) Advisory Board for the Sixth Phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6), its initial activities, and its plans to serve as a bridge between climate change applications experts and climate modelers. The climate change application community comprises researchers and other specialists who use climate information (alongside socioeconomic and other environmental information) to analyze vulnerability, impacts, and adaptation of natural systems and society in relation to past, ongoing, and projected future climate change. Much of this activity is directed toward the co-development of information needed by decision-makers for managing projected risks. CMIP6 provides a unique opportunity to facilitate a two-way dialog between climate modelers and VIACS experts who are looking to apply CMIP6 results for a wide array of research and climate services objectives. The VIACS Advisory Board convenes leaders of major impact sectors, international programs, and climate services to solicit community feedback that increases the applications relevance of the CMIP6-Endorsed Model Intercomparison Projects (MIPs). As an illustration of its potential, the VIACS community provided CMIP6 leadership with a list of prioritized climate model variables and MIP experiments of the greatest interest to the climate model applications community, indicating the applicability and societal relevance of climate model simulation outputs. The VIACS Advisory Board also recommended an impacts version of Obs4MIPs and indicated user needs for the gridding and processing of model output.