Overview

Adaptation to climate variability and change is a social process. It requires us to assess and respond to past climatic impacts, to increase adaptive capacity and resilience to multiple stresses, and to formulate plans and policies in ways which reduce the risk of adverse outcomes in the future. A key step is to make best use of the available science contribute to the evaluating potential exposure to present and future climate hazards. This requires an understanding of present day risks, as well as trends in climate, and how both may change in years to come. The climate change explorer aims to facilitate the gathering of such information and its application to adaptation strategies and actions.

There are volumes of climate data available from many sources around the world often of variable quality or of little use to decision-makers who do not have the time to track down data sources or the expertise to reformat, re-project and load them into appropriate analytical tools. Successful integration and dissemination is dependent on creating flexible and scalable frameworks that provide complex analysis tools for advanced users and deliver information to a wider audience in ways that will allow these users to evaluate how best they may be applied.

The Climate Change Explorer (CCE) addresses these needs by packaging data access routines with guidance and customized analytical and visualization procedures. This provides users with a sound analytical foundation from which to explore the climate variables relevant to their particular adaptation decisions. It is designed to simplify the tasks associated with the extraction, query and analysis of climate information, thereby enabling users to address issues of uncertainty when devising policies and strategies, and also when implementing actions. This approach makes crucial links between understanding vulnerability, monitoring and projecting climate hazards and planning adaptation processes.

Facilitating an advanced understanding of long-term climate forecasts for screening adaptation strategies and actions.

The Climate Change Explorer (CCE) provides a way for users to focus on several key assumptions regarding the interpretation of climate science:

• Only by understanding the conditions, assumptions and uncertainties of model-based statements about future climate can decision-makers evaluate the relevance of the information, the appropriateness of response options, and so make an informed assessment of risk.

• An envelope analysis of ensembles, rather than a single model, is the only way of addressing the uncertainty inherent in making a decision which is influenced by the future evolution of the climate system. These envelopes of climate change help define the climatological boundaries of potential climate change from a wide range of multi-model projections, driven by the search for climate spaces from the needs of specific localities.

• Exposure and adaptation are context-specific. In climate analysis, one size does not fit all. This requires the analysis of different variables, time frames and analytical representations. An interactive exploration of the climate science is therefore critical to the provision of useful information, and appropriate contextualization for decision support.

• The delivery of climate information encourages users to become familiar with displaying and querying climate data, from a quick scan of future envelopes through to more detailed, downscaled information to explore the local scale details of regional change. A central feature of the CCE is that it not only provides analytical routines but also access to downscaled climate data, and user-guidance through a wizard-style interface.