Challenges for developing national climate services – Poland and Norway

Abstract

This contribution discusses the challenges for developing national climate services in two countries with high fossil fuel production – Poland (coal) and Norway (oil and gas). Both countries, Poland and Norway, have highly developed weather services, but largely differ on climate services. Since empirical and dynamical downscaling of climate models started in Norway over 20 years ago and meteorological and hydrological institutions in Oslo and Bergen have been collaborating on tailoring and disseminating downscaled climate projections to the Norwegian society, climate services are now well developed in Norway. The Norwegian Centre for Climate Services (NCCS) was established in 2011. In contrast, climate services in Poland, in the international understanding, do not exist. Actually, Poland is not an exception, as compared to other Central and Eastern European countries, many of which neither have their national climate services, nor are really interested in European climate services disseminated via common EU initiatives. It is worth posing a question – can Poland learn from Norway as regards climate services? This contribution is based on results of the CHASE-PL (Climate change impact assessment for selected sectors in Poland) project, carried out in the framework of the Polish – Norwegian Research Programme. The information generated within the Polish-Norwegian CHASE-PL project that is being broadly disseminated in Poland can be considered as a substitute for information delivered in other countries by climate services.