A social science research agenda to accelerate public engagement in climate change adaptation.

Recent studies find that people in high-income countries now think of climate change impacts, such as flooding or periods of high temperature, as being of immediate relevance and concern. Individuals and households can take adaptation actions to help limit the severity of harm caused when climate impacts occur, for example, they could make adjustments to their homes such as installing flood gates or sun shades, or they could adapt their behavior such as staying indoors during the hottest part of the day. However, so far adaptation is not yet happening at the speed or scale needed to adequately prepare for the climate impacts already being experienced or those projected for the coming decades. Here, we propose an agenda for future social science research that would further our understanding of how best to increase engagement and action in climate change adaptation.

The Climatic Impact-Driver Framework for Assessment of Risk-Relevant Climate Information.

The climate science and applications communities need a broad and demand-driven concept to assess physical climate conditions that are relevant for impacts on human and natural systems. Here, we augment the description of the "climatic impact-driver" (CID) approach adopted in the Working Group I (WGI) contribution to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report. CIDs are broadly defined as "physical climate system conditions (e.g., means, events, and extremes) that affect an element of society or ecosystems. Depending on system tolerance, CIDs and their changes can be detrimental, beneficial, neutral, or a mixture of each across interacting system elements and regions." We give background information on the IPCC Report process that led to the development of the 7 CID types (heat and cold, wet and dry, wind, snow and ice, coastal, open ocean, and other) and 33 distinct CID categories, each of which may be evaluated using a variety of CID indices. This inventory of CIDs was co-developed with WGII to provide a useful collaboration point between physical climate scientists and impacts/risk experts to assess the specific climatic phenomena driving sectoral responses and identify relevant CID indices within each sector. The CID Framework ensures that a comprehensive set of climatic conditions informs adaptation planning and risk management and may also help prioritize improvements in modeling sectoral dynamics that depend on climatic conditions. CIDs contribute to climate services by increasing coherence and neutrality when identifying and communicating relevant findings from physical climate research to risk assessment and planning activities.

Stress-testing development pathways under a changing climate: water-energy-food security in the lake Malawi-Shire river system.

Malawi depends on Lake Malawi outflows into the Shire River for its water, energy and food (WEF) security. We explore future WEF security risks under the combined impacts of climate change and ambitious development pathways for water use expansion. We drive a bespoke water resources model developed with stakeholder inputs, with 29 bias-corrected climate model projections, alongside stakeholder elicited development pathways, and examine impacts on stakeholder-elicited WEF sector performance metrics. Using scenario analysis, we stress-test the system, explore uncertainties, assess trade-offs between satisfying WEF metrics, and explore whether planned regulation of outflows could help satisfy metrics. While uncertainty from potential future rainfall change generates a wide range of outcomes (including no lake outflow and higher frequency of major downstream floods), we find that potential irrigation expansion in the Lake Malawi catchments could enhance the risk of very low lake levels and risk to Shire River hydropower and irrigation infrastructure performance. Improved regulation of lake outflows through the upgraded barrage does offer some risk mitigation, but trade-offs emerge between lake level management and downstream WEF sector requirements. These results highlight the need to balance Malawi's socio-economic development ambitions across sectors and within a lake-river system, alongside enhanced climate resilience. This article is part of the theme issue 'Developing resilient energy systems'.

What can climate services learn from the broader services literature?

Climate services seek the timely production and delivery of useful climate information to decision-makers, yet there continues to be a reported 'usability gap'. To address this, many have advocated the coproduction of climate services between knowledge producers, providers and users, with a tendency to focus on tailoring information products to user needs, with less attention towards the service environment itself. In service management and service marketing fields, this is referred to as the 'servicescape' and is shown to influence behavioural intention, value creation and perceived service quality. In an effort to facilitate cross-disciplinary learning, this research asks whether climate services can learn from other service-based research in public administration/management, service management and service marketing. Performing a semi-deductive literature review, this perspective article examines themes of coproduction and servicescapes, and identifies relevant topics for future climate services research around the added value of service-dominant logic, the subjective experience of users' interaction with servicescapes, and empowerment of users as co-producers of value. This is an important first step in promoting further cross-disciplinary learning to advance both scholarship and operational delivery of climate services.

Customising global climate science for national adaptation: A case study of climate projections in UNFCCC's National Communications.

Countries differ markedly in their production of climate science. While richer nations are often home to a variety of climate models, data infrastructures and climate experts, poorer sovereigns often lack these attributes. However, less is known about countries' capacity to use global climate science and customise it into products informing national adaptation. We use a unique global dataset, the UNFCCC National Communications, to perform a global documentary analysis of scientific submissions from individual countries (n = 189). Comparing countries' climate projections with their competence in publishing climate science, our research examines the existence of geographical divides. Although countries proficient in publishing climate science use more complex climate modelling techniques, key characteristics of climate projections are highly similar around the globe, including multi-model ensembles of Global Circulation Models (GCMs). This surprising result is made possible because of the use of pre-configured climate modelling software packages. One concern is that these tools restrict customisation, such as country-specific observations, modelling information, and visualisation. Such tools may therefore hide a new geographical divide where countries with higher scientific capacities are able to inform what goes into these software packages, whereas lower scientific capacity countries are dependent upon these choices - whether beneficial for them or not. Our research suggests that free-to-use modelling and training efforts may unwittingly restrict, rather than foster, countries' capacity to customise global climate science into nationally relevant and legitimate climate information.

Investing in a good pair of wellies: how do non-experts interpret the expert terminology of climate change impacts and adaptation?

The UK is already experiencing the impacts of climate change and these are expected to increase in scale and severity in the coming decades. Preparing for impacts by undertaking adaptive actions can potentially reduce the level of harm. In the UK, the government's adaptation program aims to develop a "climate-ready society." However, achieving broad public engagement in adaptation presents a significant communications challenge. Here, we aimed to understand how UK residents use and interpret the terms "climate change impacts" and "climate change adaptation." We conducted a secondary analysis of 22 interviews with UK residents, who were recruited for their diverse climate change views. The interviewees expressed a lack of clarity around expected climate change impacts, which did not prevent them from saying that they were already experiencing the effects of a changing climate. Further, threats to cultural norms and values were perceived as serious and emotionally charged. Adaptation was often conflated with mitigation, and responsibility for adaptation was contested. We discuss the implications of our findings for developing more useful public communication about climate change adaptation.

Water Resource Planning Under Future Climate and Socioeconomic Uncertainty in the Cauvery River Basin in Karnataka, India.

Decision-Making Under Uncertainty (DMUU) approaches have been less utilized in developing countries than developed countries for water resources contexts. High climate vulnerability and rapid socioeconomic change often characterize developing country contexts, making DMUU approaches relevant. We develop an iterative multi-method DMUU approach, including scenario generation, coproduction with stakeholders and water resources modeling. We apply this approach to explore the robustness of adaptation options and pathways against future climate and socioeconomic uncertainties in the Cauvery River Basin in Karnataka, India. A water resources model is calibrated and validated satisfactorily using observed streamflow. Plausible future changes in Indian Summer Monsoon (ISM) precipitation and water demand are used to drive simulations of water resources from 2021 to 2055. Two stakeholder-identified decision-critical metrics are examined: a basin-wide metric comprising legal instream flow requirements for the downstream state of Tamil Nadu, and a local metric comprising water supply reliability to Bangalore city. In model simulations, the ability to satisfy these performance metrics without adaptation is reduced under almost all scenarios. Implementing adaptation options can partially offset the negative impacts of change. Sequencing of options according to stakeholder priorities into Adaptation Pathways affects metric satisfaction. Early focus on agricultural demand management improves the robustness of pathways but trade-offs emerge between intrabasin and basin-wide water availability. We demonstrate that the fine balance between water availability and demand is vulnerable to future changes and uncertainty. Despite current and long-term planning challenges, stakeholders in developing countries may engage meaningfully in coproduction approaches for adaptation decision-making under deep uncertainty.

Storylines: an alternative approach to representing uncertainty in physical aspects of climate change.

As climate change research becomes increasingly applied, the need for actionable information is growing rapidly. A key aspect of this requirement is the representation of uncertainties. The conventional approach to representing uncertainty in physical aspects of climate change is probabilistic, based on ensembles of climate model simulations. In the face of deep uncertainties, the known limitations of this approach are becoming increasingly apparent. An alternative is thus emerging which may be called a 'storyline' approach. We define a storyline as a physically self-consistent unfolding of past events, or of plausible future events or pathways. No a priori probability of the storyline is assessed; emphasis is placed instead on understanding the driving factors involved, and the plausibility of those factors. We introduce a typology of four reasons for using storylines to represent uncertainty in physical aspects of climate change: (i) improving risk awareness by framing risk in an event-oriented rather than a probabilistic manner, which corresponds more directly to how people perceive and respond to risk; (ii) strengthening decision-making by allowing one to work backward from a particular vulnerability or decision point, combining climate change information with other relevant factors to address compound risk and develop appropriate stress tests; (iii) providing a physical basis for partitioning uncertainty, thereby allowing the use of more credible regional models in a conditioned manner and (iv) exploring the boundaries of plausibility, thereby guarding against false precision and surprise. Storylines also offer a powerful way of linking physical with human aspects of climate change.

Combining dispersion modelling with synoptic patterns to understand the wind-borne transport into the UK of the bluetongue disease vector.

Bluetongue, an economically important animal disease, can be spread over long distances by carriage of insect vectors (Culicoides biting midges) on the wind. The weather conditions which influence the midge's flight are controlled by synoptic scale atmospheric circulations. A method is proposed that links wind-borne dispersion of the insects to synoptic circulation through the use of a dispersion model in combination with principal component analysis (PCA) and cluster analysis. We illustrate how to identify the main synoptic situations present during times of midge incursions into the UK from the European continent. A PCA was conducted on high-pass-filtered mean sea-level pressure data for a domain centred over north-west Europe from 2005 to 2007. A clustering algorithm applied to the PCA scores indicated the data should be divided into five classes for which averages were calculated, providing a classification of the main synoptic types present. Midge incursion events were found to mainly occur in two synoptic categories; 64.8% were associated with a pattern displaying a pressure gradient over the North Atlantic leading to moderate south-westerly flow over the UK and 17.9% of the events occurred when high pressure dominated the region leading to south-easterly or easterly winds. The winds indicated by the pressure maps generally compared well against observations from a surface station and analysis charts. This technique could be used to assess frequency and timings of incursions of virus into new areas on seasonal and decadal timescales, currently not possible with other dispersion or biological modelling methods.

The social and scientific values that shape national climate scenarios: a comparison of the Netherlands, Switzerland and the UK.

This paper seeks to understand why climate information is produced differently from country to country. To do this, we critically examined and compared the social and scientific values that shaped the production of three national climate scenarios in the Netherlands, Switzerland and the UK. A comparative analysis of documentary materials and expert interviews linked to the climate scenarios was performed. Our findings reveal a new typology of use-inspired research in climate science for decision-making: (i) innovators, where the advancement of science is the main objective; (ii) consolidators, where knowledge exchanges and networks are prioritised; and (iii) collaborators, where the needs of users are put first and foremost. These different values over what constitutes 'good' science for decision-making are mirrored in the way users were involved in the production process: (i) elicitation, where scientists have privileged decision-making power; (ii) representation, where multiple organisations mediate on behalf of individual users; and (iii) participation, where a multitude of users interact with scientists in an equal partnership. These differences help explain why climate knowledge gains its credibility and legitimacy differently even when the information itself might not be judged as salient and usable. If the push to deliberately co-produce climate knowledge is not sensitive to the national civic epistemology at play in each country, scientist-user interactions may fail to deliver more 'usable' climate information.

Adaptation planning and the use of climate change projections in local government in England and Germany.

Planning for adaptation to climate change is often regarded to be a local imperative and considered to be more effective if grounded on a solid evidence base and recognisant of relevant climate projections. Research has already documented some of the challenges of making climate information usable in decision-making but has not yet sufficiently reflected on the role of the wider institutional and regulatory context. This article examines the impact of the external institutional context on the use and usability of climate projections in local government through an analysis of 44 planning and climate change (adaptation) documents and 54 semi-structured interviews with planners in England and Germany conducted between July 2013 and May 2014. We show that there is little demand for climate projections in local adaptation planning in either country due to existing policy, legal and regulatory frameworks. Local government in England has not only experienced a decline in use of climate projections, but also the waning of the climate change adaptation agenda more widely, amidst changes in the planning and regulatory framework and severe budget cuts. In Germany, spatial planning makes substantial use of past and present climate data, but the strictly regulated nature of planning prevents the use of climate projections, due to their inherent uncertainties. Findings from the two countries highlight that if we are to better understand the usability of climate projections, we need to be more aware of the institutional context within which planning decisions are made. Otherwise we run the risk of continuing to provide tools and information that are of limited use within their intended context.

Promoting protection against a threat that evokes positive affect: The case of heat waves in the United Kingdom.

Heat waves can cause death, illness, and discomfort, and are expected to become more frequent as a result of climate change. Yet, United Kingdom residents have positive feelings about hot summers that may undermine their willingness to protect themselves against heat. We randomly assigned United Kingdom participants to 1 of 3 intervention strategies intended to promote heat protection, or to a control group. The first strategy aimed to build on the availability heuristic by asking participants to remember high summer temperatures, but it elicited thoughts of pleasantly hot summer weather. The second strategy aimed to build on the affect heuristic by evoking negative affect about summer temperatures, but it evoked thoughts of unpleasantly cold summer weather. The third strategy combined these 2 approaches and succeeded in evoking thoughts of unpleasantly hot summer weather. Across 2 experiments, the third (combined) strategy increased participants' expressed intentions to protect against heat compared with the control group, while performing at least as well as the 2 component strategies. We discuss implications for developing interventions about other "pleasant hazards." (PsycINFO Database Record

Database support for adaptation to climate change: An assessment of web-based portals across scales.

The widely recognized increase in greenhouse gas emissions is necessitating adaptation to a changing climate, and policies are being developed and implemented worldwide, across sectors, and between government scales globally. The aim of this article is to reflect on one of the major challenges: facilitating and sharing information on the next adaptation practices. Web portals (i.e., web sites) for disseminating information are important tools in meeting this challenge, and therefore, we assessed the characteristics of select major portals across multiple scales. We found that there is a rather limited number of case studies available in the portals-between 900 and 1000 in total-with 95 that include cost information and 195 that include the participation of stakeholders globally. Portals are rarely cited by researchers, suggesting a suboptimal connection between the practical, policy-related, and scientific development of adaptation. The government portals often lack links on search results between US and European Union (EU) web sites, for example. With significant investments and policy development emerging in both the United States and the European Union, there is great potential to share information via portals. Moreover, there is the possibility of better connecting the practical adaptation experience from bottom-up projects to the science of adaptation. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2016;12:627-631. © 2016 SETAC.

Barriers and enablers to the use of seasonal climate forecasts amongst organisations in Europe.

Seasonal climate forecasts (SCF) provide information about future climate variability that has the potential to benefit organisations and their decision-making. However, the production and availability of SCF does not guarantee its use in decision-making per se as a range of factors and conditions influence its use in different decision-making contexts. The aim of this paper is to identify the barriers and enablers to the use of SCF across organisations in Europe. To achieve that, we conducted 75 in-depth interviews with organisations working across eight sectors (including energy, transport, water and agriculture) and 16 countries. The majority of the organisations interviewed do not currently use SCF. This was due to the low reliability and skill of SCF in Europe but also with other non-technical aspects such as the lack of relevance and awareness of SCF in the organisations. Conversely, the main enabler to the use of SCF was the interactions with the providers of SCF. In addition, the level of organisational resources, capacity and expertise were also significant enablers to the use of SCF in organisations. This paper provides the first empirical assessment of the use of SCF in Europe. Such insights provide not only an overview of the existing barriers and enablers to the use of SCF in Europe and how these can be overcome and negotiated to enhance the usability of SCF, but can also help inform the broader and emerging context of climate services development in Europe.

Tailoring the visual communication of climate projections for local adaptation practitioners in Germany and the UK.

Visualizations are widely used in the communication of climate projections. However, their effectiveness has rarely been assessed among their target audience. Given recent calls to increase the usability of climate information through the tailoring of climate projections, it is imperative to assess the effectiveness of different visualizations. This paper explores the complexities of tailoring through an online survey conducted with 162 local adaptation practitioners in Germany and the UK. The survey examined respondents' assessed and perceived comprehension (PC) of visual representations of climate projections as well as preferences for using different visualizations in communicating and planning for a changing climate. Comprehension and use are tested using four different graph formats, which are split into two pairs. Within each pair the information content is the same but is visualized differently. We show that even within a fairly homogeneous user group, such as local adaptation practitioners, there are clear differences in respondents' comprehension of and preference for visualizations. We do not find a consistent association between assessed comprehension and PC or use within the two pairs of visualizations that we analysed. There is, however, a clear link between PC and use of graph format. This suggests that respondents use what they think they understand the best, rather than what they actually understand the best. These findings highlight that audience-specific targeted communication may be more complex and challenging than previously recognized.

Communicating uncertainty in seasonal and interannual climate forecasts in Europe.

Across Europe, organizations in different sectors are sensitive to climate variability and change, at a range of temporal scales from the seasonal to the interannual to the multi-decadal. Climate forecast providers face the challenge of communicating the uncertainty inherent in these forecasts to these decision-makers in a way that is transparent, understandable and does not lead to a false sense of certainty. This article reports the findings of a user-needs survey, conducted with 50 representatives of organizations in Europe from a variety of sectors (e.g. water management, forestry, energy, tourism, health) interested in seasonal and interannual climate forecasts. We find that while many participating organizations perform their own 'in house' risk analysis most require some form of processing and interpretation by forecast providers. However, we also find that while users tend to perceive seasonal and interannual forecasts to be useful, they often find them difficult to understand, highlighting the need for communication formats suitable for both expert and non-expert users. In addition, our results show that people tend to prefer familiar formats for receiving information about uncertainty. The implications of these findings for both the providers and users of climate information are discussed.

Heat protection behaviour in the UK: results of an online survey after the 2013 heatwave.

BACKGROUND: The Heatwave Plan for England provides guidance for personal and home protection measures during heatwaves. Although studies in the USA, Australia and Europe have surveyed heat-related behaviours during heatwaves, few have been conducted in the UK. This study assesses personal and housing (at-home) behaviour and housing characteristics of the UK population during the 2013 heatwave. METHODS: This paper analyses data from 1497 respondents of an online survey on heat protection measures and behaviour. Participants were asked questions about their behaviour during the 2013 heatwave, the characteristics of their current housing as well as about any negative health outcomes experienced due to the hot weather. We used multinomial logit regression to analyse personal and home heat protection behaviour and logistic regression to analyse characteristics of participants' current home (installed air conditioner, curtains etc.). We stratified the outcomes by age, sex, ethnicity, income, education and regional location. RESULTS: In 2013, for all heat-related illness (except tiredness), a higher proportion of those in the younger age groups reported symptoms compared with those in the older age groups. Women, higher income groups and those with higher education levels were found to be more likely to report always/often taking personal heat protective measures. The elderly were less likely to take some personal and home protective measures but were more likely to live in insulated homes and open windows at night to keep their home cool. CONCLUSION: Our study has found a high level of awareness of the actions to take during heatwaves in the UK, and has identified important demographic indicators of sections of the UK population that might benefit from additional or more targeted information. The health agencies should attempt to provide better information about heatwaves to those vulnerable (elderly, those at risk living in London, low income earners) or identify any barriers that might be preventing them from undertaking protective behaviour.

Hand in hand: public endorsement of climate change mitigation and adaptation.

This research investigated how an individual's endorsements of mitigation and adaptation relate to each other, and how well each of these can be accounted for by relevant social psychological factors. Based on survey data from two European convenience samples (N = 616 / 309) we found that public endorsements of mitigation and adaptation are strongly associated: Someone who is willing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (mitigation) is also willing to prepare for climate change impacts (adaptation). Moreover, people endorsed the two response strategies for similar reasons: People who believe that climate change is real and dangerous, who have positive attitudes about protecting the environment and the climate, and who perceive climate change as a risk, are willing to respond to climate change. Furthermore, distinguishing between (spatially) proximal and distant risk perceptions suggested that the idea of portraying climate change as a proximal (i.e., local) threat might indeed be effective in promoting personal actions. However, to gain endorsement of broader societal initiatives such as policy support, it seems advisable to turn to the distant risks of climate change. The notion that "localising" climate change might not be the panacea for engaging people in this domain is discussed in regard to previous theory and research.

Heat protection behaviors and positive affect about heat during the 2013 heat wave in the United Kingdom.

Heat waves pose serious health risks, and are expected to become more frequent, longer lasting, and more intense in the future under a changing climate. Yet, people in the UK seem to feel positive when thinking about hot weather. According to research on the affect heuristic, any positive or negative emotions evoked by potentially risky experiences may be used as cues to inform concerns about risk protection. If so, then their positive feelings toward hot weather might lead UK residents to lower intentions to adopt heat protection behaviors. Here, we examine the relationships between heat protection behaviors during the July 2013 UK heat wave and self-reports of having heard heat protection recommendations, feeling positive affect about heat, seeing heat protection measures as effective, and trusting the organizations making those recommendations. Responses to a national survey revealed that 55.1% of participants had heard heat protection recommendations during the 2013 UK heat wave. Those who reported having heard recommendations also indicated having implemented more heat protection behaviors, perceiving heat protection behaviors as more effective, feeling more positive about heat, and intending to implement more protection behaviors in future hot summers. Mediation analyses suggested that heat protection recommendations may motivate heat protection behaviors by increasing their perceived effectiveness, but undermine their implementation by evoking positive affect about hot weather. We discuss our findings in the context of the affect heuristic and its implications for heat protection communications.

Climate change beliefs and perceptions of weather-related changes in the United Kingdom.

Public perception research in different countries has suggested that real and perceived periods of high temperature strengthen people's climate change beliefs. Such findings raise questions about the climate change beliefs of people in regions with moderate climates. Relatively little is known about whether public concerns about climate change may also be associated with perceived changes in other weather-related events, such as precipitation or flooding. We examine the relationship between perceived changes in weather-related events and climate change beliefs among U.K. residents at a time of below-average winter temperatures and recent flooding. National survey data (n = 1,848) revealed that heat waves and hot summers were perceived to have become less common during respondents' lifetimes, while flooding, periods of heavy rainfall, coastal erosions, and mild winters were perceived to have increased in frequency and cold winters were perceived to be unchanged. Although perceived changes in hot-weather-related events were positively associated with climate change beliefs, perceived changes in wet-weather-related events were found to be an even stronger predictor. Self-reported experience of "flooding in own area" and "heat-wave discomfort" also significantly contributed to climate change beliefs. These findings highlight the importance of salient weather-related events and experiences in the formation of beliefs about climate change. We link our findings to research in judgment and decision making, and propose that those wishing to engage with the public on the issue of climate change should not limit their focus to heat.