Climate services for societal transformations towards sustainability

The researchers in the project will investigate communication strategies, visualization methods and data requirements for a new generation of climate services to explore their potential to support societal transformations towards sustainability.

To meet current and future sustainability challenges, scientists and policy makers point to the urgent need for societal transformations. In the climate field there is a need for communication and integration of various types of data and knowledge, spanning geographical scales, systems and sectors.

Climate services provide data and information about the climate system and anticipated changes to serve as decision support for users. It is a national and international priority to support the extensive societal efforts required to accelerate transformations towards decarbonization and climate resilience.

Climate services also serve as central arenas for connecting research, policy and practice within the field. However, despite significant investment in developing climate services, there is still a gap between existing services and their practical use and relevance to the intended sectors and stakeholders.

Research suggests that the development of climate services needs to go beyond merely providing more, better or higher-resolution data, and instead focus more on knowledge of users’ needs and perspectives, from data production to information use. We also need to learn more about the extent to which, and how, climate services can contribute to comprehensive societal transformations – in other words: their transformative potential.

To contribute to the development of a new generation of climate services, the project group poses the overarching research question: How can new insights from communication research, visualization research and climate research be integrated to understand and develop the usability and transformative potential of climate services?

The researchers will be conducting three interconnected sub-studies in order to

• Identify the types of climate service currently available nationally and internationally, and analyze their usability and transformative potential.
• Design a new prototype of climate services for Sweden in collaboration with users.
• Explore and assess the prototype’s transformative potential, and also develop guidelines for future climate service development.

The researchers will identify and develop new climate indicators and new types of climate information. These will express more sector-targeted and relevant aspects of climate change than do current services. The researchers will also focus on narratives as a new approach to climate services.