scholarly journals Climate information needs of Gascoyne - Murchison pastoralists: a representative study of the Western Australian grazing industry

2005 ◽  
Vol 45 (12) ◽  
pp. 1613 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. U. Keogh ◽  
I. W. Watson ◽  
K. L. Bell ◽  
D. H. Cobon ◽  
S. C. Dutta
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Lead Time ◽  
Information Needs ◽  
Lead Times ◽  
Climate Information ◽  
Test Question ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Climate Research ◽  
Climate Forecasting ◽  
Climate Forecasts

The Gascoyne–Murchison region of Western Australia experiences an arid to semi-arid climate with a highly variable temporal and spatial rainfall distribution. The region has around 39.2 million hectares available for pastoral lease and supports predominantly cattle and sheep grazing leases. In recent years a number of climate forecasting systems have been available offering rainfall probabilities with different lead times and forecast periods; however, the extent to which these systems are capable of fulfilling the requirements of the local pastoralists is still ambiguous. Issues can range from ensuring forecasts are issued with sufficient lead time to enable key planning or decisions to be revoked or altered, to ensuring forecast language is simple and clear, to negate possible misunderstandings in interpretation. A climate research project sought to provide an objective method to determine which available forecasting systems had the greatest forecasting skill at times of the year relevant to local property management. To aid this climate research project, the study reported here was undertaken with an overall objective of exploring local pastoralists’ climate information needs. We also explored how well they understand common climate forecast terms such as ‘mean’, ‘median’ and ‘probability’, and how they interpret and apply forecast information to decisions. A stratified, proportional random sampling was used for the purpose of deriving the representative sample based on rainfall-enterprise combinations. In order to provide more time for decision-making than existing operational forecasts that are issued with zero lead time, pastoralists requested that forecasts be issued for May–July and January–March with lead times counting down from 4 to 0 months. We found forecasts of between 20 and 50 mm break-of-season or follow-up rainfall were likely to influence decisions. Eighty percent of pastoralists demonstrated in a test question that they had a poor technical understanding of how to interpret the standard wording of a probabilistic median rainfall forecast. This is worthy of further research to investigate whether inappropriate management decisions are being made because the forecasts are being misunderstood. We found more than half the respondents regularly access and use weather and climate forecasts or outlook information from a range of sources and almost three-quarters considered climate information or tools useful, with preferred methods for accessing this information by email, faxback service, internet and the Department of Agriculture Western Australia’s Pastoral Memo. Despite differences in enterprise types and rainfall seasonality across the region we found seasonal climate forecasting needs were relatively consistent. It became clear that providing basic training and working with pastoralists to help them understand regional climatic drivers, climate terminology and jargon, and the best ways to apply the forecasts to enhance decision-making are important to improve their use of information. Consideration could also be given to engaging a range of producers to write the climate forecasts themselves in the language they use and understand, in consultation with the scientists who prepare the forecasts.

Visual storytelling about future weather extremes in Norway

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jana Sillmann ◽  
Melanie Burford ◽  
Miriam Stackpole Dahl
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
High Impact ◽  
Future Climate ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Climate Information ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Visual Storytelling ◽  
Western Norway ◽  
Event Based

<p>Extreme floods with severe impacts have hit municipalities in Western Norway in recent decades and they will become more intense and frequent with global warming. We present a project that focused on providing an approach for visualizing climate change information for decision-makers challenged with planning resilient infrastructure and preparedness measures for future flood impacts. We have chosen visual storytelling through a short film as the most suitable and effective tool for building a communication strategy to reach out to local and regional decision-makers on the one hand and the research community on the other.</p><p>The objective was to present and communicate results from a research project in a film by focusing on low-probability high-impact events using a storyline approach. The scope of the research project was to provide Norwegian stakeholders with a realistic representation of how an observed high-impact event of the past will look like under projected future climate conditions (Schaller et al. 2020, Hegdahl et al. 2020). Recent high-impact flood events in Norway have emphasized the need for more proactive climate change adaptation. This requires local, actionable and reliable climate information to support the decision making as well as awareness and consideration of barriers to adaptation. Thus, a seamless chain from global climate system modelling over high-resolution hydrological modelling to impact assessments is needed. We have therefore taken a novel "Tales of future weather" approach (Hazeleger et al. 2015), which suggests that scenarios tailored to a specific region and stakeholder context in combination with numerical weather prediction models will offer a more realistic picture of what future weather might look like, hence facilitating adaptation planning and implementation.</p><p>The film we produced particularly focuses on the extreme flood event in October 2005 that affected people (including fatalities) in Bergen municipality, how the event can be seen in context of historic floods and its atmospheric drivers. It tells the story of people having experienced this event and how Bergen municipality was responding to that event.  One key objective of the film is to drive interest and attention to the event-based storyline approach (Sillmann et al. 2020) to facilitate uptake of climate information and to empower decision makers with new knowledge and tools to assist them in their decision making.</p><p> </p><p><strong>References</strong></p><p>Hazeleger, W., B. Van den Hurk, E. Min, G-J. Van Oldenborgh, A. Petersen, D. Stainforth, D., E. Vasileiadou, and L. Smith, 2015: Tales of future weather. Nature Climate Change, 5, 107-113, doi: 10.1038/nclimate2450.</p><p>Hegdahl, T.J., K. Engeland, M. Müller and J. Sillmann, 2020: Atmospheric River induced floods in western Norway – under present and future climate, J. Hydrometeorology, doi: 10.1175/JHM-D-19-0071.1.</p><p>Schaller, N., J. Sillmann, M. Mueller, R. Haarsma, W. Hazeleger, T. Jahr Hegdahl, T. Kelder, G. van den Oord, A. Weerts, and K. Whan, 2020: The role of spatial and temporal model resolution in a flood event storyline approach in Western Norway, Weather and Climate Extremes, 29, doi: 10.1016/j.wace.2020.100259.</p><p>Sillmann, J., T. G. Shepherd, B. van den Hurk, W. Hazeleger, O. Martius, J. Zscheischler, 2020: Event-based storylines to address climate risk, Earth’s Future, doi: 10.1029/2020EF001783.</p>

scholarly journals Long-range climate forecasting and its use for water management in the Pacific Northwest region of North America

2000 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 163-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan F. Hamlet ◽  
Dennis P. Lettenmaier
Keyword(s):  
Pacific Northwest ◽  
Time Scales ◽  
Climate Models ◽  
Climate Model ◽  
Lead Times ◽  
Climate Forecasting ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Climate Forecasts ◽  
Resampling Method ◽  
Streamflow Forecasts

Ongoing research by the Climate Impacts Group at the University of Washington focuses on the use of recent advances in climate research to improve streamflow forecasts at seasonal-to-interannual, decadal, and longer time scales. Seasonal-to-interannual climate forecasting capabilities have advanced significantly in the past several years, primarily because of improvements in the understanding of, and an ability to forecast, El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) at seasonal/interannual time scales, and because of better understanding of longer time scale climate phenomena like the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO). These phenomena exert strong controls on climate variability along the Pacific Coast of North America. The streamflow forecasting techniques we have developed for Pacific Northwest (PNW) rivers are based on climate forecasts that facilitate longer lead times (as much as a year) than the methods that are traditionally used for water management (maximum forecast lead times of a few months). At interannual time scales, the simplest of these techniques involves resampling meteorological data from previous years identified to be in similar climate categories as are forecast for the coming year. These data are then used to drive a hydrology model, which produces an ensemble of streamflow forecasts that are analogous to those that result from the well-known Extended Streamflow Prediction (ESP) method. This technique is a relatively simple, but effective, way of incorporating long-lead climate information into streamflow forecasts. It faithfully captures the history of observed climate variability. Its main limitation is that the sample size of observed events for some climate categories is small because of the length of the historic record. Furthermore, it is unable to capture important aspects of global change, which may interact with shorter term variations through changes in climate phenomena like ENSO and PDO. An alternative to the resampling method is to use nested regional climate models to produce the long-lead climate forecasts. Success using this approach has been hindered to some degree by the bias that is inherent in climate models, even when downscaled using regional nested modeling approaches. Adjustment or correction for this bias is central to the use of climate model output for hydrologic forecasting purposes. Approaches for dealing with climate model bias in the context of global and meso-scale are presently an area of active research. We illustrate an experimental application of the nested climate modeling approach for the Columbia River Basin, and compare it with the simpler resampling method. At much longer time scales, changes in Columbia River flows that might be associated with global climate change are of considerable concern in the PNW, given recent Endangered Species Act listing of certain salmonid species, and the increase in water demand that is expected to follow increases in human population in the region. Many of the same general challenges associated with the spatial downscaling of climate forecasts are present in these long-range investigations. Additional uncertainties exist in the ability of climate models to predict the effects of changing greenhouse gas concentrations. These uncertainties tend to dominate the results, and lead us to use relatively simplemethods of downscaling seasonal temperature and precipitation to interpret the implications of alternative climate scenarios on PNW water resources.

scholarly journals Conditioning Ensemble Streamflow Prediction with the North Atlantic Oscillation improves skill at longer lead times

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seán Donegan ◽  
Conor Murphy ◽  
Shaun Harrigan ◽  
Ciaran Broderick ◽  
Saeed Golian ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Water Resources ◽  
North Atlantic Oscillation ◽  
Water Resources Management ◽  
North Atlantic ◽  
Lead Time ◽  
Lead Times ◽  
Streamflow Prediction ◽  
Resources Management ◽  
Ensemble Streamflow Prediction

Abstract. Skilful hydrological forecasts can benefit decision-making in water resources management and other water-related sectors that require long-term planning. In Ireland, no such service exists to deliver forecasts at the catchment scale. In order to understand the potential for hydrological forecasting in Ireland, we benchmark the skill of Ensemble Streamflow Prediction (ESP) for a diverse sample of 46 catchments using the GR4J hydrological model. Skill is evaluated within a 52-year hindcast study design over lead times of 1 day to 12 months for each of 12 initialisation months, January to December. Our results show that ESP is skilful against a probabilistic climatology benchmark in the majority of catchments up to several months ahead. However, the level of skill was strongly dependent on lead time, initialisation month, and individual catchment location and storage properties. Mean ESP skill was found to decay rapidly as a function of lead time, with continuous ranked probability skill scores of 0.8 (1-day), 0.32 (2-week), 0.18 (1-month), 0.05 (3-month), and 0.01 (12-month). Forecasts were generally more skilful when initialised in summer than other seasons. A strong correlation (ρ = 0.94) was observed between forecast skill and catchment storage capacity (baseflow index), with the most skilful regions, the Midlands and East, being those where slowly responding, high storage catchments are located. Results also highlight the potential utility of ESP for decision-making, as measured by its ability to forecast low and high flow events. In addition to our benchmarking experiment, we conditioned ESP on the winter North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) using adjusted hindcasts from the Met Office's Global Seasonal Forecasting System version 5. We found gains in winter forecast skill of 7–18 % were possible over lead times of 1 to 3 months, and that NAO-conditioned ESP is particularly effective at forecasting dry winters, a critical season for water resources management. We conclude that ESP is skilful in a number of different contexts and thus should be operationalised in Ireland given its potential benefits for water managers and other stakeholders.

scholarly journals Assessing Decision Timing and Seasonal Climate Forecast Needs of Winter Wheat Producers in the South-Central United States

2018 ◽  
Vol 57 (9) ◽  
pp. 2129-2140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toni Klemm ◽  
Renee A. McPherson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Winter Wheat ◽  
Lead Time ◽  
The United States ◽  
Seasonal Climate ◽  
Decision Tools ◽  
South Central ◽  
Climate Forecasts ◽  
Seasonal Climate Forecasts

AbstractAgricultural decision-making that adapts to climate variability is essential to global food security. Crop production can be severely impacted by drought, flood, and heat, as seen in recent years in parts of the United States. Seasonal climate forecasts can help producers reduce crop losses, but many nationwide, publicly available seasonal forecasts currently lack relevance for agricultural producers, in part because they do not reflect their decision needs. This study examines the seasonal forecast needs of winter wheat producers in the southern Great Plains to understand what climate information is most useful and what lead times are most relevant for decision-making. An online survey of 119 agricultural advisers, cooperative extension agents in Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas, and Colorado, was conducted and gave insights into producers’ preferences for forecast elements, what weather and climate extremes have the most impact on decision-making, and the decision timing of major farm practices. The survey participants indicated that winter wheat growers were interested not only in directly modeled variables, such as total monthly rainfall, but also in derived elements, such as consecutive number of dry days. Moreover, these agricultural advisers perceived that winter wheat producers needed seasonal climate forecasts to have a lead time of 0–2.5 months—the planning lead time for major farm practices, like planting or harvesting. A forecast calendar and monthly rankings for forecast elements were created that can guide forecasters and advisers as they develop decision tools for winter wheat producers and that can serve as a template for other time-sensitive decision tools developed for stakeholder communities.

scholarly journals Climate Forecasts for Corn Producer Decision Making

2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (5) ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eugene S. Takle ◽  
Christopher J. Anderson ◽  
Jeffrey Andresen ◽  
James Angel ◽  
Roger W. Elmore ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Weather Conditions ◽  
The United States ◽  
Climate Forecast ◽  
Climate Information ◽  
Corn Production ◽  
Decision Tools ◽  
Decision Cycle ◽  
Climate Forecasts

Abstract Corn is the most widely grown crop in the Americas, with annual production in the United States of approximately 332 million metric tons. Improved climate forecasts, together with climate-related decision tools for corn producers based on these improved forecasts, could substantially reduce uncertainty and increase profitability for corn producers. The purpose of this paper is to acquaint climate information developers, climate information users, and climate researchers with an overview of weather conditions throughout the year that affect corn production as well as forecast content and timing needed by producers. The authors provide a graphic depicting the climate-informed decision cycle, which they call the climate forecast–decision cycle calendar for corn.

scholarly journals Hydroclimatic Information Needs of Smallholder Farmers in the Lower Bengal Delta, Bangladesh

Atmosphere ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (9) ◽  
pp. 1009
Author(s):  
Uthpal Kumar ◽  
Saskia Werners ◽  
Spyridon Paparrizos ◽  
Dilip Kumar Datta ◽  
Fulco Ludwig
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Capacity Building ◽  
Lead Time ◽  
Information Needs ◽  
Smallholder Farmers ◽  
Information Services ◽  
Production Costs ◽  
Crop Damage ◽  
Bengal Delta ◽  
Female Farmers

Hydroclimatic information services are vital for sustainable agricultural practices in deltas. They advance adaptation practices of farmers that lead to better economic benefit through increased yields, reduced production costs, and minimized crop damage. This research explores the hydroclimatic information needs of farmers by addressing (1) what kind of information is needed by the periurban delta farmers, and (2) whether information needs have any temporal dimension that changes with time following capacity building during coproduction of information services. Results reveal that the attributes of weather and water-related forecasts most affecting the farmers are rainfall, temperature, water, and soil salinity, along with extreme events such as cyclone and storm surges. The majority of the male farmers prefer one- to two-week lead-time forecasts for strategic and tactical decision-making; while female farmers prefer short-time forecasts with one-day to a week lead time that suggests the difference of purpose of the forecasts between male and female farmers. Contrarily, there is little preference for monthly, seasonal, and real-time forecasts. Information communication through a smartphone app is preferred mostly because of its easy accessibility and visualization. Farmers foresee that capacity building on acquiring hydroclimatic information is vital for agricultural decision-making. We conclude that a demand-driven coproduction of a hydroclimatic information service created through iterative interaction with and for farmers will enable the farmers to understand their information needs more explicitly.

scholarly journals Transforming Access to and Use of Climate Information Products Derived from Remote Sensing and In Situ Observations

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (22) ◽  
pp. 4721
Author(s):  
Gloriose Nsengiyumva ◽  
Tufa Dinku ◽  
Remi Cousin ◽  
Igor Khomyakov ◽  
Audrey Vadillo ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Remote Sensing ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Information Needs ◽  
Climate Information ◽  
Climate Data ◽  
Climate Services ◽  
International Research Institute ◽  
Combining Data ◽  
Information Products ◽  
User Friendly

Making climate-sensitive economic sectors resilient to climate trends and shocks, through adaptation to climate change and managing uncertainties associated with climate extremes, will require effective use of climate information to help practitioners make climate-informed decisions. The provision of weather and climate information will depend on the availability of climate data and its presentation in formats that are useful for decision making at different levels. However, in many places around the world, including most African countries, the collection of climate data has been seriously inadequate, and even when available, poorly accessible. On the other hand, the availability of climate data by itself may not lead to the uptake and use of such data. These data must be presented in user-friendly formats addressing specific climate information needs in order to be used for decision-making by governments, as well as the public and private sectors. The generated information should also be easily accessible. The Enhancing National Climate Services (ENACTS) initiative, led by Columbia University’s International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI), has been making efforts to overcome these challenges by supporting countries to improve the available climate data, as well as access to and use of climate information products at relevant spatial and temporal scales. Challenges to the availability of climate data are alleviated by combining data from the national weather observation network with remote sensing and other global proxies to generate spatially and temporally complete climate datasets. Access to climate information products is enhanced by developing an online mapping service that provides a user-friendly interface for analyzing and visualizing climate information products such as maps and graphs.

scholarly journals Opportunities and challenges for seasonal climate forecasts to more effectively assist smallholder farming decisions

2020 ◽  
Vol 116 (1/2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Bright Chisadza ◽  
Abbyssinia Mushunje ◽  
Kenneth Nhundu ◽  
Ethel E. Phiri
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Smallholder Farmers ◽  
Smallholder Farming ◽  
Seasonal Climate Forecast ◽  
Seasonal Climate ◽  
Farm Planning ◽  
Climate Forecasting ◽  
Farm Production ◽  
Climate Forecasts ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities

The ability of smallholder farmers to utilise seasonal climate forecast (SCF) information in farm planning to reflect anticipated climate is a precursor to improved farm management. However, the integration of SCF by smallholder farmers into farm planning has been poor, partly because of the lack of forecast skill, lack of communication and inability to see the relevance of the SCFs for specific farming decisions. The relevance of seasonal climate forecasting in farming decisions can be enhanced through improved understanding of SCF from the smallholder farmers’ perspective. Studies that have been done of how smallholder farmers understand SCF and how the available SCFs influence smallholder farmers’ decisions are limited. Therefore, the objective of this paper was to review how smallholder farmers make decisions on farming practices based on SCFs and the challenges and opportunities thereof. The review shows that the majority of smallholder farmers in Africa make use of either scientific or indigenous knowledge climate forecasts and, in some cases, a combination of both. There are mixed results in the area of evaluating benefits of SCFs in decision-making and farm production. In some cases, the outcomes are positive, whereas in others they are difficult to quantify. Thus, the integration of SCFs into smallholder farmers’ decision-making is still a challenge. We recommend that significant work must be done to improve climate forecasts in terms of format, and spatial and temporal context in order for them to be more useful in influencing decision-making by smallholder farmers.

Seasonal Climate Predictions: Farmers, Planners, and Policymakers

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cynthia Rosenzweig ◽  
Daniel Hillel
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Southern Oscillation ◽  
Economic Benefits ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Seasonal Climate ◽  
Climate Research ◽  
Climate Forecasting ◽  
Resource Managers ◽  
Climate Forecasts ◽  
Seasonal Climate Forecasts

Researchers from the physical, biological, and social sciences, in communication with decision-makers, are working to improve and apply seasonal climate forecasts relevant to risk management in climate-sensitive systems. Noteworthy is the mission of the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI), which focuses on integrating the roles of science and society to forecast climate phenomena in general, and the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in particular. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration created IRI in 1996 at Columbia University in New York to engage in climate research and modeling on the seasonalto- interannual time scale and to provide the results of the research to people affected by climate in various regions of the world. Agrawala et al. (2001) characterize the IRI as a “boundary” institution, straddling two major divides: one between fundamental research and societal applications, and the other between developed and developing countries. The motivations for its creation included fostering a multidisciplinary approach to applications, building on current programs and policies, and redressing inequity in large-scale climate research. Farmers and other agricultural decision-makers are a major group of potential users of seasonal climate forecasts. Water-resource managers are another such group. Interdisciplinary efforts have deepened the realization that improved climate information systems are embedded in social, economic, and political contexts and that understanding these contexts is required in order to improve the use of forecasts. A key aspect of the context of climate forecasting is the interrelationship of climate, climate forecasts, and risk. A growing body of research pertains to how agricultural decision-makers relate to risk and how responding to climate forecasts may help them manage it. This research is in the process of being consolidated into a framework by which forecasts can be made, disseminated, and utilized effectively by a range of decision-makers. Questions relevant to the use of climate predictions include: How can agricultural practitioners at different levels of social organization use climate forecasts to improve their planning and management decisions? How are climate risks perceived and acted on? What are the potential economic benefits? What policies can facilitate the use of climate-forecast information?

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