Search

There is growing awareness among governments, businesses, and the general public of risks arising from changes to our climate on time scales from months through to decades. Some climatic changes could be unprecedented in their harmful socioeconomic impacts, while others with adequate forewarning and planning could offer benefits. There is therefore a pressing need for decision-makers, including policy-makers, to have access to and to use high-quality, accessible, relevant, and credible climate information about the past, present, and future to help make better-informed decisions and policies. We refer to the provision and use of such information as climate services. Established programs of research and operational activities are improving observations and climate monitoring, our understanding of climate processes, climate variability and change, and predictions and projections of the future climate. Delivering climate information (including data and knowledge) in a way that is usable and useful for decision-makers has had less attention, and society has yet to optimally benefit from the available information. While weather services routinely help weather-sensitive decision-making, similar services for decisions on longer time scales are less well established. Many organizations are now actively developing climate services, and a growing number of decision-makers are keen to benefit from such services. This article describes progress made over the past decade developing, delivering, and using climate services, in particular from the worldwide effort galvanizing around the Global Framework for Climate Services under the coordination of UN agencies. The article highlights challenges in making further progress and proposes potential new directions to address such challenges.

In response to the Global Framework for Climate Services’ (GFCS) call for the establishment of national coordination mechanisms, Switzerland founded its National Centre for Climate Services (NCCS) in late 2015. The Centre is organized as a network of nine Federal Offices and Institutes as well as partners from academia. Based on a federally agreed national adaptation strategy and plan for action, the NCCS is organized in the sense of a nationwide network. All members are on a par and have an equal say. Attention is given to both pure climate information as well as downstream applications along the climate services value chain.The NCCS pursues three main goals: 1) bundle the existing climate services of the Swiss Confederation, 2) foster dialogue among stakeholder communities, and 3) co-produce new tailored solutions. The co-creation and dissemination of climate services is vital for effective climate mitigation, adaptation and societal transformation. Thus, the NCCS supports policymakers from the national to local level as well as the private sector and society at large in minimizing their risks, maximizing opportunities and optimizing costs.Since its foundation in 2015, several accomplishments have been made through the NCCS’ priority themes, such as the release of the Swiss climate scenarios (CH2018) in 2018 and hydrological scenarios (Hydro-CH2018) in 2021 as a downstream application. Other accomplishments include novel insights into climate-sensitive disaster risk reduction as well as the elaboration of a new hail climatology serving multiple stakeholders in the insurance sector. Moreover, the NCCS web portal www.nccs.ch has been online for more than two years, serving as a one stop-shop for the provision of tailored climate services, best practices and guidance.This presentation will give an overview of the NCCS and its first milestones as well as discuss lessons learnt and current challenges. This also includes new perspectives from a new NCCS programme on cross-sectoral climate impacts and the development of respective decision-support tools to be launched in 2021.

The Alps have always been of global interest and significance due to their natural and cultural diversity and are presently the number one tourist destination worldwide. Therefore, raising awareness of issues of global change and sustainability is most relevant in this region. Due to its integrative nature, geography can contribute substantially to disseminating knowledge about the Alps. This paper reports on the development of an environmental education concept for the community of Galtur. The concept is based on a thorough analysis of the Alpine environment, the recording of educational interest in the Alps, and the development of implementation strategies for environmental education programmes. The main goal of the concept is to contribute to a sustainable future for the Alps. The paper highlights the role of geographical research and education in promoting public awareness and understanding of sustainability issues.