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Keynote:

Knowledge generation vs. decision processes - the issue of regional climate service

Hans von Storch

Institute of Coastal Research, Helmholtz Zentrum Geesthacht,

KlimaCampus, University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany

22-26. August, 2011- 8th Baltic Sea Science CongressSt. Petersburg, Russia

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Who is this?

Hans von Storch (born 1949)

Director of Institute for Coastal Research, GKSS Research Center, near Hamburg,

Professor at the Meteorological Institute of Hamburg University

Works also with social and cultural scientists.

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1. Climate Service – traditional approach2. The linear model 3. Competing knowledge claims; scientific and

cultural constructions; post-normalilty4. Need of building dialogue

– regional climate services5. Examples

Overview

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• The concept of “climate service” emerged first in North America, with publications in governmental documents in the early 1980s and earlier (Changnon et al., 1990).

• “An N[ational]C[limate]S[ervice] identifies, produces, and delivers authoritative and timely information about climate variations and trends and their impacts on built and natural systems on regional, national, and global space scales. This information informs and is informed by decision-making, risk management, and resource management concerns for a variety of public and private users acting on regional, national, and international scales. The stakeholders include public and private individuals and organizations at federal, state, and local levels … with sensitivity to and need for climate-related information.” (Miles et al., 1990).

• National and international actors being more interested in issues related to mitigation of man-made climate change and regional and local actors more engaged in adaptation measures (Changnon et al., 1980; von Storch et al., 2011).

Climate Service

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• “Serve as a clearinghouse and technical access point to stakeholders for regionally and nationally relevant information on climate, climate impacts, and adaptation; developing comprehensive databases of information relevant to specific regional and national stakeholder needs.• Provide education on climate impacts, vulnerabilities, and application of climate information in decision-making• Design decision-support tools that facilitate use of climate information in stakeholders’ near-term operations and long-term planning• Provide user access to climate and climate impacts experts for technical assistance in use of climate information and to inform the climate forecast community of their information needs• Provide researcher, modeler, and observations experts access to users to help guide direction of research, modeling, and observation activities• Propose and evaluate adaptation strategies for climate variability and change.”

Main elements of a climate service (Miles et al., 1990)

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The IPCC

- has documented strong consensual evidence that the human emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the past, and foreseeable future has, and will continue to warm the climate system.

- most of this warming can not be explained without the increase in GHG concentrations – with the present knowledge.

The IPCC consensus

Scientific Knowledge

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A „linear model“-framework of how to think about response strategies(Hasselmann, 1990)

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For many natural scientists, a scientific analysis with scientific valid conclusions is sufficient for deriving a policy/management agenda for dealing with societal problems related to climate issues.

This concept is called the „linear model“.

The linear model has been found being inadequate for describing or even guiding societal decisions processes.

Instead, competing factors, such as other environmental and socioeconomic change, competing knowledge claims and value-preferences have to be taken into account.

Linear Model

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Increasing level of consensus among scientists that climate change is underway (manifestation) and that it is likely a result of anthropogenic influences (attribution; Bray, 2010), elevated media coverage since mid 2000’s (Grundmann, pers. comm.) but non-increasing attention/concern among lay people (not only in the US; Newport, 2010, Ratter, pers. comm.)

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Skeptics among Lay-People?

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Is scientific knowledge driving the policy process?

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How strongly do you employ the following sources of information, for deciding about issues related to climate adaptation?

Regional administrators in German Baltic Sea coastal regions.

Bray, 2011, pers. comm.

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Constructions

• Climate change is a „constructed“ issue. People hardly experience „climate change“.

• Different constructions prevail.• One construction is scientific, i.e. an „objective“ analysis of

observations and interpretation by theories. It is described by the IPCC.

• The other construction is cultural, in particular maintained and transformed by public media.

• Climate science is in a post-normal phase (where interest-led utility is a significant driver, and less so “normal” curiosity)

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• The science-policy/public interaction is not an issue of the linear model of „knowledge speaks to power“. The problem is not that the public is stupid or uneducated.

• The convergence of opinions among climate scientists is not matched with a similar convergence among stakeholders and lay-people.

• Science has failed to respond to legitimate public questions and has instead requested. “Trust us, we are scientists”.

• An explanation for the failing convergence of understanding is that the scientific knowledge is confronted on the „explanation marked“ with other forms of knowledge. Scientific knowledge does not necessarily “win” this competition.

Knowledge Market

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Post-normal Science

Jerry Ravetz, Silvio Funtovicz, 1986 and earlier

Post-normal Science: State of science, when facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent.

In this state,

- science is mostly not done for reasons of curiosity but is asked for as support for preconceived value-based agendas.

- scientific knowledge is merely one form of knowledge, which competes on the „explanation marked“ with other forms of knowledge. Scientific knowledge does not necessarily “win” this competition.

Regional Climate service comprises …

1. Building a dialogue with public and deciders2. Dealing with the issues of

- present change (consistency with scenarios)- perspectives (projections vs. predictions)- discrimination between legitimate scientific knowledge and politically motivated knowledge claims-post-normal conditioning of climate research

3. Provision of - robust (homogeneous) data - robust knowledge

Regional Climate Office

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North German Climate Office

An institution set up to enable communication between science and stakeholders

• that is: making sure that science understands the questions and concerns of a variety of stakeholders

• that is: making sure that the stakeholders understand the scientific assessments and their limits.

Typical stakeholders: Coastal defense, agriculture, off-shore activities (energy), tourism, water management, fisheries, urban planning

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Raw data from 12 regional climate projectionsAnalyzed for Northern Germany and Pommeranian BightInteractive user interface

„Klimaatlas/ atlas klimatu“

http://www.ujscieodry-atlasklimatu.dehttp://www.norddeutscher-klimaatlas.de

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Presence pointing to the future?

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Regional JJA temperatures

26Jonas Bhend, pers. comm.

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Regional DJF precipitation

28Jonas Bhend, pers. comm.

Possible or probable?

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Projections and predictions

The IPCC provides the following operational definitions :

“A projection is a potential future evolution of a quantity or set of quantities” and “A climate prediction or climate forecast is the result of an attempt to produce an estimate of the actual evolution of the climate in the future, for example, at seasonal, interannual or long-term time scales.”

But in practice, there terms are mixed up.Bray and von Storch (2009) find that

• about 29% of climate scientists call “most probable developments” projections,• while about 20% “possible developments” are labeled “predictions”.

Assessing climate knowledge

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Publication in January 2008:

More than 30 contributing institutionsMore than 80 contributing authors from 13 countries More than 475 pagesMore than 2000 references (~150 non-

English)

www.baltex-research.eu/BACC

Ch1: Introduction and summaryCh2: Past and current climate changeCh3: Projections of future climate changeCh4: Climate-related change in terrestrial and freshwater ecosystemsCh5: Climate-related change in marine ecosystemsCh6: Annexes

The BACC effort @ BALTEX

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BACC: In short …

Presently a warming is going on in the Baltic Sea region, and will continue throughout the 21st century.

BACC considers it plausible that this warming is at least partly related to anthropogenic factors.

So far, and in the next few decades, the signal is limited to temperature and directly related variables, such as ice conditions.

Later, changes in the water cycle are expected to become obvious.

This regional warming will have a variety of effects on terrestrial and marine ecosystems – some predictable such as the changes in the phenology others so far hardly predictable.

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HELCOM Thematic Assessment published May 2007

The report is based on the BACC material but condensed to 59 pages with a focus of the marine environment of the Baltic Sea. It has been approved by the HELCOM contracting governments of 9 countries and the European Commission.

An unprecedented cooperation of a climate-related research program (BALTEX) and an intergovernmental body

Post-Normality

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Climate science is taking place under post-normal conditions.

Results may appear favourable or unfavourable to the climate scientist according to his/her value preferences. The results constitute “ammunition” in a politically antagonistic dispute about “climate policy”, in which many scientists take side.

The conflict about the political issue of the climate challenge is framed as if scientific results would be key to the success of the own value-based agenda.

Post-normal Science

Robust data sets

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GKSS in GeesthachtThe CoastDat data set:• Long (60 years) and high-resolution reconstructions of recent offshore and coastal conditions mainly in terms of wind, storms, waves, surges and currents and other variables in N Europe• Scenarios (100 years) of possible consistent futures of coastal and offshore conditions• extension – ecological variables, Baltic Sea, E Asia, Laptev Sea

Clients:• Governmental: various coastal agencies dealing with coastal defense and coastal traffic• Companies: assessments of risks (ship and offshore building and operations) and opportunities (wind energy)• General public / media: explanations of causes of change; perspectives and options of change

www.coastdat.de

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Wave Energy Flux [kW/m]

Currents Power [W/m2]

Some applications of

- Ship design- Navigational safety- Offshore wind- Interpretation of measurements- Oils spill risk and chronic oil pollution- Ocean energy- Scenarios of storm surge conditions- Scenarios of future wave conditions

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• Climate change is a „constructed“ issue.• Different constructions interact and compete.• One class of constructions is scientific.• Another class of constructions is cultural, in particular

maintained and transformed by the media.• Climate science operates in a post-normal situation, which

goes along with politicizing science, and scientizing politics. • Public opinion and scientific understanding do not converge.• Climate Science needs to offer “Climate Service”, which

includes the establishment of a dialogue with the public (direct or via media) and stakeholders –recognizing the socio-cultural dynamics of the issue.

• Climate science needs to reflect upon its role and function.

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