Vaughan, C, Dessai, S orcid.org/0000-0002-7879-9364 and Hewitt, C (2018) Surveying Climate Services: What Can We Learn from a Bird’s-Eye View? Weather, Climate, and Society, 10 (2). pp. 373-395. ISSN 1948-8327
Abstract
Billed as the creation and provision of timely, tailored information for decision-making at all levels of society, climate services have garnered a great deal of attention in recent years. Despite this growing attention, strategies to design, diagnose, and evaluate climate services remain relatively ad hoc—and while a general sense of what constitutes “good practice” in climate service provision is developing in some areas, and with respect to certain aspects of service provision, a great deal about the effective implementation of such service remains unknown. This article reviews a sample of more than 100 climate service activities as a means to generate a snapshot of the state of the field in 2012. It is found that a “typical climate service” at this time was provided by a national meteorological service operating on a national scale to provide seasonal climate information to agricultural decision-makers online. The analysis shows that the field of climate services is still emerging—marked by contested definitions, an emphasis on capacity development, uneven progress toward coproduction, uncertain funding streams, and a lack of evaluation activities—and stands as a signpost against which the development of the field can be measured. The article also reflects on the relative contribution of this sort of sampling activity in informing “good practice” and offers suggestions for how both sampling and case study efforts can be better designed to increase the potential for learning. This article concludes with some observations on the relative contribution that broad-based analyses can play in informing this emerging field.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2018 American Meteorological Society. Permission to use figures, tables, and brief excerpts from this work in scientific and educational works is hereby granted provided that the source is acknowledged. Any use of material in this work that is determined to be “fair use” under Section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Act or that satisfies the conditions specified in Section 108 of the U.S. Copyright Act (17 USC §108) does not require the AMS’s permission. Republication, systematic reproduction, posting in electronic form, such as on a website or in a searchable database, or other uses of this material, except as exempted by the above statement, requires written permission or a license from the AMS. All AMS journals and monograph publications are registered with the Copyright Clearance Center (http://www.copyright.com). Questions about permission to use materials for which AMS holds the copyright can also be directed to permissions@ametsoc.org. Additional details are provided in the AMS Copyright Policy statement, available on the AMS website (http://www.ametsoc.org/CopyrightInformation). Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. |
Keywords: | Social Science; Agriculture; History; Societal impacts |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Sustainability Research Institute (SRI) (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 17 Jul 2018 09:57 |
Last Modified: | 10 Oct 2018 00:39 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | American Meteorological Society |
Identification Number: | 10.1175/WCAS-D-17-0030.1 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:133374 |