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Malawi depends on Lake Malawi outflows into the Shire River for its water, energy and food (WEF) security. We explore future WEF security risks under the combined impacts of climate change and ambitious development pathways for water use expansion. We drive a bespoke water resources model developed with stakeholder inputs, with 29 bias-corrected climate model projections, alongside stakeholder elicited development pathways, and examine impacts on stakeholder-elicited WEF sector performance metrics. Using scenario analysis, we stress-test the system, explore uncertainties, assess trade-offs between satisfying WEF metrics, and explore whether planned regulation of outflows could help satisfy metrics. While uncertainty from potential future rainfall change generates a wide range of outcomes (including no lake outflow and higher frequency of major downstream floods), we find that potential irrigation expansion in the Lake Malawi catchments could enhance the risk of very low lake levels and risk to Shire River hydropower and irrigation infrastructure performance. Improved regulation of lake outflows through the upgraded barrage does offer some risk mitigation, but trade-offs emerge between lake level management and downstream WEF sector requirements. These results highlight the need to balance Malawi's socio-economic development ambitions across sectors and within a lake-river system, alongside enhanced climate resilience. This article is part of the theme issue 'Developing resilient energy systems'.

From the devastating effects of the 1877–1879 Great Drought in the Northeast region to the creation of the Center for Weather Forecast and Climate Studies (CPTEC) at the National Institute for Space Research (INPE) in the early 1990 s, Brazil went from a total absence of meteorological expertise to becoming a member of a select group of nations with the infrastructure and technical expertise to build and run a global general circulation model. This article reviews the most critical moments in the development of climate services in Brazil, addressing the evolution of its infrastructure for observation, monitoring, modeling, and prediction, the still incipient efforts in systematically understanding users’ perspectives and needs, and the work required to incorporate the usable science and co-production paradigms into the main centers of production of climate information. Advances and challenges are analyzed, and actions for strengthening the climate services framework are proposed.

Climate adaptation policy in the UK is ineffective and fails to address the many barriers to implementing adaptation in practice. As climate change impacts are increasing, there is an urgent need to address these barriers. Focusing on England, this policy brief provides a practical approach to systematically understand and address these barriers for policymakers and practitioners who operationalise national adaptation policy.

Uncertainty is an inherent characteristic of climate forecasts and projections. While there is an expanding body of international research on identifying what climate information users need to know about uncertainty, and how this should be communicated, very little of this has been conducted in a Chinese cultural context. In this paper, we report on the findings of interviews with climate experts (n = 28) and (potential) users of climate information in China (n = 18) at seasonal and multidecadal timescales, with the objective of addressing the following research questions: (1) What information about uncertainty in climate forecasts and projections is currently provided to users in China? (2) What do climate experts believe that users need to know about uncertainty? (3) What information about uncertainty would (potential) users like to receive? (4) What challenges do providers and users perceive with respect to the communication of uncertainty? We find that while seasonal forecasts are predominantly presented deterministically, current and potential users are aware that there is uncertainty associated with them. Climate experts highlight the probabilistic nature of forecasts and the conditional nature of forecast quality, as areas for communication development. Interviews with (potential) users indicate that (1) preferences for deterministic information are not unanimous; (2) probabilities associated with conditions being above/below normal may only be considered useful for decision-making if they are > 60%; and (3) forecasts that provide tailored statements on probability of user-relevant thresholds are preferred. At multidecadal timescales, we observe lower engagement with projections, and less evidence of interaction between providers and recipients, suggesting that development of climate services at multidecadal timescales will need to first highlight the added value of these. We present key recommendations for communicating uncertainty in seasonal forecasts and explore the potential value of multidecadal projections.

As adaptation have received increasing attention, national adaptation policies and plans have been substantially developed. Despite the significant roles of national policy for adaptation, barriers to national adaptation policy have been overlooked and our understanding of the barriers is not sufficient as we expect. Also, the barriers are pointed out a reason of the current adaptation gaps. To address this situation, we use a systematic literature review to examine the barriers to adaptation policy specifically at the national level, as well as their origin, impact, and solutions to overcome them, considering the importance of national-level adaptation for the overall adaptation. Scrutinising a sample of eighteen articles, we identify eight categories of barriers to national adaptation policy. Lack of resources, fragmentation, and lack of awareness and communication are the most commonly identified barriers to national adaptation policy. We also find that the literature does not provide sufficient detail on the underlying causes of the barriers, the relationships between them and their consequences. The literature also gives limited attention to solutions for overcoming barriers, and the suggestions made are too general and normative to be helpful in practice. But the existing literature helps to interrogate and visualise the interlinkages between the origins, barriers and impacts, as well as between different barriers. This highlights that barriers should be addressed simultaneously and provides preliminary insights into a deeper understanding of the barriers. We conclude by outlining the key knowledge gaps and future research priorities to help support national adaptation policy processes.

Increasingly challenged by climate variability and change, many of the world’s governments have turned to climate services as a means to improve decision making and mitigate climate-related risk. While there have been some efforts to evaluate the economic impact of climate services, little is known about the contexts in which investments in climate services have taken place. An understanding of the factors that enable climate service investment is important for the development of climate services at local, national and international levels. This paper addresses this gap by investigating the context in which Uruguay’s Ministry of Livestock, Agriculture and Fisheries invested in and developed its National System of Agriculture Information (SNIA), a national-level climate service for the agriculture sector. Using qualitative research methods, the paper uses key documents and 43 interviews to identify six factors that have shaped the decision to invest in the SNIA: (1) Uruguay’s focus on sustainable agricultural intensification; (2) previous work on climate change adaptation; (3) the modernization of the meteorological service; (4) the country’s open data policy; (5) the government’s decision to focus the SNIA on near-term (e.g., seasonal) rather than long-term climate risk; and (6) the participation of key individuals. While the context in which these enablers emerged is unique to Uruguay, it is likely that some factors are generalizable to other countries. Social science research needed to confirm the wider applicability of innovation systems, groundwork, data access and champion is discussed.

Irrespective of the success of climate mitigation efforts, societies worldwide face the challenge of adapting to a changing climate. In this paper, we examine UK residents’ expectations of future threats and opportunities associated with climate change impacts, along with willingness to prioritise different climate change impacts for investment. Using a national survey (n = 2007), we report on three main findings. First, UK residents tend to expect threats related to flooding and wet weather to be more likely and concerning than heat extremes or opportunities. Second, UK residents’ expectations of climate change impacts do not align with expert assessments, especially showing lower estimates of heat-related threats as compared to experts. Third, willingness to allocate resources to potential climate change impacts tends to be more strongly associated with anticipated concern should they occur than climate change belief or the expected likelihood of them occurring. We discuss the implications of our findings for policies and communications about climate change adaptation in the UK and elsewhere.

Billed as the creation and provision of timely, tailored information for decision-making at all levels of society, climate services have garnered a great deal of attention in recent years. Despite this growing attention, strategies to design, diagnose, and evaluate climate services remain relatively ad hoc—and while a general sense of what constitutes “good practice” in climate service provision is developing in some areas, and with respect to certain aspects of service provision, a great deal about the effective implementation of such service remains unknown. This article reviews a sample of more than 100 climate service activities as a means to generate a snapshot of the state of the field in 2012. It is found that a “typical climate service” at this time was provided by a national meteorological service operating on a national scale to provide seasonal climate information to agricultural decision-makers online. The analysis shows that the field of climate services is still emerging—marked by contested definitions, an emphasis on capacity development, uneven progress toward coproduction, uncertain funding streams, and a lack of evaluation activities—and stands as a signpost against which the development of the field can be measured. The article also reflects on the relative contribution of this sort of sampling activity in informing “good practice” and offers suggestions for how both sampling and case study efforts can be better designed to increase the potential for learning. This article concludes with some observations on the relative contribution that broad-based analyses can play in informing this emerging field.

Decision-Making Under Uncertainty (DMUU) approaches have been less utilized in developing countries than developed countries for water resources contexts. High climate vulnerability and rapid socioeconomic change often characterize developing country contexts, making DMUU approaches relevant. We develop an iterative multi-method DMUU approach, including scenario generation, coproduction with stakeholders and water resources modeling. We apply this approach to explore the robustness of adaptation options and pathways against future climate and socioeconomic uncertainties in the Cauvery River Basin in Karnataka, India. A water resources model is calibrated and validated satisfactorily using observed streamflow. Plausible future changes in Indian Summer Monsoon (ISM) precipitation and water demand are used to drive simulations of water resources from 2021 to 2055. Two stakeholder-identified decision-critical metrics are examined: a basin-wide metric comprising legal instream flow requirements for the downstream state of Tamil Nadu, and a local metric comprising water supply reliability to Bangalore city. In model simulations, the ability to satisfy these performance metrics without adaptation is reduced under almost all scenarios. Implementing adaptation options can partially offset the negative impacts of change. Sequencing of options according to stakeholder priorities into Adaptation Pathways affects metric satisfaction. Early focus on agricultural demand management improves the robustness of pathways but trade-offs emerge between intrabasin and basin-wide water availability. We demonstrate that the fine balance between water availability and demand is vulnerable to future changes and uncertainty. Despite current and long-term planning challenges, stakeholders in developing countries may engage meaningfully in coproduction approaches for adaptation decision-making under deep uncertainty.

Society can benefit from usable climate information to better prepare and adapt to the risks and opportunities posed by climate variability and change. An adequate and effective provision of climate information – from historical observations through to seasonal forecasts, and multi-decadal climate change projections – is critical to inform planning and decision-making in climate-sensitive sectors. Central to this are the end-users of climate information and a growing emphasis on tailored climate information and services shaped by user needs. However, knowledge about the use of climate information across European economic sectors is limited. This paper identifies the spectrum of sectoral information requirements across a number of sectors including agriculture, forestry, energy, water, tourism, insurance, health, emergency services and transport sectors, drawing from an online survey (n = 462) and interviews with (potential) users of climate information (n = 80). This analysis reveals shared opportunities across sectors including the potential application of decadal climate predictions. In addition, common barriers and enablers to the uptake of climate information were also noted including the format of the information provided, the need for compatibility with existing in-house systems, and the perceived credibility and trust of information providers. This analysis also points towards a perceived increasing fragmentation of available information and the desire amongst end-users for a European body able to centralise and coordinate climate data. We highlight some of the current factors that still need to be adequately addressed in order to enhance the uptake and application of climate information in decision-making across European economic sectors. Keywords: User needs, Climate information, Decision-making, Climate services, Europe

Increasingly climate scientists and the users of climate information are being asked to deliberately co-produce knowledge to improve decision-making about adaptation to climate change. To do this, scientists not only need to be committed and willing to interact with users but also have the capacity to listen, understand, and respond to their needs. Yet little is known about how climate scientists perceive users and respond to their needs when deliberately co-producing knowledge. Using the case study of the UK Climate Projections 2009 (UKCP09) we seek to address this gap. Drawing on interviews with climate scientists, boundary workers, and government officials involved in UKCP09, we investigate how perceptions of users and their needs are constructed as well as the difficulties in responding to them. Our research shows that climate scientists struggle to respond to users other than a small cadre of actors like themselves – highly technical and highly numerate – mini-mes; as what constitutes ‘credible, usable, and relevant’ science is different for users and scientists. Others involved in UKCP09 considered a broader set of users, with more heterogeneous capacities, as the target audience. We find that the climate scientists’ narrow perceptions of users were strongly influenced by (i) their past experiences; (ii) the level and type of scientist-user interactions; and (iii) the institutional setting in which the science took place. This research suggests that climate scientists need broader social support from other experts as well as institutional goals geared towards a broader set of users if they are to successfully co-produce climate knowledge.

This perspective critically assesses how the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) could facilitate a closer alignment of its activities and include lessons drawn from the policy and decisionmaking communities working on the ground at the regional/local levels. The objective is to facilitate practitioner input into the detailed choice of topics and priorities for IPCC review and in the conclusions drawn (we define practitioners as those engaged in the development and application of practical responses to climate change on the ground). By means of a series of workshops with academics, policy officials and decision-makers in the United Kingdom, the research reported here illuminates how the IPCC’s Working Group II (WGII) has been used in the past to inform decision-making and how practitioner responses to climate change could better inform the IPCC process in the future. In particular, we recommend three key actions. Firstly that IPCC WGII should incorporate more practitioners as authors to improve the awareness and understanding amongst the writing teams of the nature and detail of decisions being made in response to climate change; secondly a practitioner-led IPCC Special Report should be commissioned on good-practice responses to climate change; and thirdly a new body should be created, attached to the IPCC, to synthesise and report on good practice on climate response strategies in a timely manner. By adopting these recommendations, the IPCC could become more directly useful to decision-makers working on adaptation at the national, regional and local levels and enable more actionable decision-making.

This perspective critically assesses how the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) could facilitate a closer alignment of its activities and include lessons drawn from the policy and decision-making communities working on the ground at the regional/local levels. The objective is to facilitate practitioner input into the detailed choice of topics and priorities for IPCC review and in the conclusions drawn (we define practitioners as those engaged in the development and application of practical responses to climate change on the ground). By means of a series of workshops with academics, policy officials and decision-makers in the United Kingdom, the research reported here illuminates how the IPCC’s Working Group II (WGII) has been used in the past to inform decision-making and how practitioner responses to climate change could better inform the IPCC process in the future. In particular, we recommend three key actions. Firstly that IPCC WGII should incorporate more practitioners as authors to improve the awareness and understanding amongst the writing teams of the nature and detail of decisions being made in response to climate change; secondly a practitioner-led IPCC Special Report should be commissioned on good-practice responses to climate change; and thirdly a new body should be created, attached to the IPCC, to synthesise and report on good practice on climate response strategies in a timely manner. By adopting these recommendations, the IPCC could become more directly useful to decision-makers working on adaptation at the national, regional and local levels and enable more actionable decision-making.

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The widely recognized increase in greenhouse gas emissions is necessitating adaptation to a changing climate, and policies are being developed and implemented worldwide, across sectors, and between government scales globally. The aim of this article is to reflect on one of the major challenges: facilitating and sharing information on the next adaptation practices. Web portals (i.e., web sites) for disseminating information are important tools in meeting this challenge, and therefore, we assessed the characteristics of select major portals across multiple scales. We found that there is a rather limited number of case studies available in the portals—between 900 and 1000 in total—with 95 that include cost information and 195 that include the participation of stakeholders globally. Portals are rarely cited by researchers, suggesting a suboptimal connection between the practical, policy-related, and scientific development of adaptation. The government portals often lack links on search results between US and European Union (EU) web sites, for example. With significant investments and policy development emerging in both the United States and the European Union, there is great potential to share information via portals. Moreover, there is the possibility of better connecting the practical adaptation experience from bottom-up projects to the science of adaptation.

Reducing the psychological distance of climate change has repeatedly been proposed as one strategy to increase individuals’ motivation to respond to climate change. From the perspective of construal level theory, decreasing psychological distance should not itself influence people’s willingness to act but change the processes that underlie individual decision-making. We conducted two experiments in which we manipulated the psychological distance of climate change. We found that participants with a distant focus relied more on scepticism to represent risks and make decisions about supporting climate change, whereas participants with a proximal perspective relied more on fear when making such judgements. However, the predicted Fear x Distance interaction was only found when self-reported fear rather than experimentally manipulated fear was used as a moderator. Our results suggest that simply proximising won’t increase engagement and call for a more differentiated perspective on the effects of psychological distance in the context of climate change.

Population growth in the next few decades will increase the need for food production, while the yields of major food crops could be impacted by the changing climate and changing threats from pests and pathogens. Crop breeding, both through conventional techniques, and GM assisted breeding could help meet these challenges, if adequately supported by appropriate information on the future climate. We highlight some of the major challenges for crop breeders and growers in the coming decades, and describe the main characteristics of crop breeding techniques and other adaptation options for agriculture. We review recent uses of climate information to support crop breeding decisions and make recommendations for how this might be improved. We conclude that there is significant potential for breeders to work more closely with climate scientists and crop modellers in order to address the challenges of climate change. It is not yet clear how climate information can best be used. Fruitful areas of investigation include: provision of climate information to identify key target breeding traits and develop improved success criteria (e.g. for heat/drought stress); identification of those conditions under which multiple stress factors (for example, heat stress, mid-season drought stress, flowering drought stress, terminal drought stress) are important in breeding programmes; use of climate information to inform selection of trial sites; identification of the range of environments and locations under which crop trials should be performed (likely to be a wider range of environments than done at present); identification of appropriate duration of trials (likely to be longer than current trials, due to the importance of capturing extreme events); and definition of appropriate methods for incorporating climate information into crop breeding programmes, depending on the specific needs of the breeding programme and the strengths and weaknesses of available approaches. Better knowledge is needed on climate-related thresholds important to crop breeders, for example on the frequency and severity of extreme climate events relevant to the product profile, or to help provide tailored climate analyses (particularly for extreme events). The uncertainties inherent in climate and impact projections provide a particular challenge for translating climate science into actionable outcomes for agriculture. Further work is needed to explore relevant social and economic assumptions such as the level and distribution of real incomes, changing consumption patterns, health impacts, impacts on markets and trade, and the impact of legislation relating to conservation, the environment and climate change.

Public perception research in different countries has suggested that real and perceived periods of high temperature strengthen people's climate change beliefs. Such findings raise questions about the climate change beliefs of people in regions with moderate climates. Relatively little is known about whether public concerns about climate change may also be associated with perceived changes in other weather-related events, such as precipitation or flooding. We examine the relationship between perceived changes in weather-related events and climate change beliefs among U.K. residents at a time of below-average winter temperatures and recent flooding. National survey data (n = 1,848) revealed that heat waves and hot summers were perceived to have become less common during respondents' lifetimes, while flooding, periods of heavy rainfall, coastal erosions, and mild winters were perceived to have increased in frequency and cold winters were perceived to be unchanged. Although perceived changes in hot-weather-related events were positively associated with climate change beliefs, perceived changes in wet-weather-related events were found to be an even stronger predictor. Self-reported experience of "flooding in own area" and "heat-wave discomfort" also significantly contributed to climate change beliefs. These findings highlight the importance of salient weather-related events and experiences in the formation of beliefs about climate change. We link our findings to research in judgment and decision making, and propose that those wishing to engage with the public on the issue of climate change should not limit their focus to heat.

The UK Government’s first National Adaptation Programme seeks to create a ‘climate-ready society’ capable of making well-informed and far-sighted decisions to address risks and opportunities posed by a changing climate, where individual households are expected to adapt if it is in their interest to do so. How, and to what extent, households are able to adapt to a changing climate remains unclear. Like other developed countries, research on UK adaptation has focused predominately on public and private organisations. To fill that gap, a systematic review was conducted to understand what actions UK households have taken in response to, or in anticipation of, a changing climate; what drives or impedes these actions; and whether households will act autonomously. We found that UK households struggle to build long-term adaptive capacity and are reliant upon intuitive reactive coping responses. That split is concerning because coping responses are less effective for some climate risks (e.g. flooding); cost more over the long-term; and fail to create household capacity to adapt to other stresses. Low-cost, low-skill coping responses were already being implemented whereas he adoption of more permanent physical measures, behavioural changes and acceptance of new responsibilities are unlikely to occur autonomously without financial or further government support. If public policy on household adaptation to climate change is to be better informed, more high-quality empirical research is urgently needed

RESUMO Introdução: O Quérion é uma forma rara e inflamatória de tinea capitis causada por fungos dermatófitos. O diagnóstico é dificultado pela demora no exame cultural e possibilidade de várias etiologias no diagnóstico diferencial. O tratamento é prolongado e implica o recurso a antifúngicos sistémicos. Novos fármacos têm sido considerados após a descontinuação da griseofulvina em Portugal. Casos clínicos: Apresentamos duas crianças com lesões dolorosas do couro cabeludo com reação inflamatória exuberante, exsudativa e alopécia local acompanhadas de febre. O exame bacteriológico foi negativo e o micológico revelou Trichophyton mentagrophytes. Foram medicados com flucloxacilina endovenosa, antifúngicos orais (griseofulvina e itraconazol), corticoide e antifúngico tópicos. A resposta foi favorável com evolução lenta para a cura com área de alopécia residual. Conclusão: Estes casos destacam-se pela sua raridade e ilustram a exuberância das manifestações clínicas desta entidade. O diagnóstico precoce, a identificação e tratamento da fonte de contágio e as medidas de higiene e vigilância sanitária são primordiais para o controlo da infeção. ABSTRACT Introduction: Kerion celsi is the rare and inflammatory form of tinea capitis which is caused by dermatophyte fungi. Diagnosis is not easy due to the delay in cultural examination and the need to consider various etiologies in the differential diagnosis. Treatment must be prolonged and requires systemic antifungals. Since griseofulvin was discontinued in the Portuguese market, it has been necessary to consider therapeutic alternatives. Case report: We present two children with painful exsudative lesions of the scalp with exuberant infl ammatory reaction, local alopecia and fever. Bacteriological culture was negative and Trichophyton mentagrophytes was isolated in mycological culture. Patients were treated with intravenous flucloxacillin, oral antifungals (griseofulvin and itraconazole) topical antifungal and corticosteroid. The outcome was favourable, with a residual alopecia area. Conclusion: These cases stand out for their rarity and illustrate the clinical exuberance and the difficulties in diagnosis and treatment of this entity. An early diagnosis, the identification and treatment of the infection source and health monitoring measures are critical for the infection control.

Introdução: O Quérion é uma forma rara e infl amatória de tinea capitis causada por fungos dermatófi tos. O diagnóstico é difi cultado pela demora no exame cultural e possibilidade de várias etiologias no diagnóstico diferencial. O tratamento é prolongado e implica o recurso a antifúngicos sistémicos. Novos fármacos têm sido considerados após a descontinuação da griseofulvina em Portugal. Casos clínicos: Apresentamos duas crianças com lesões dolorosas do couro cabeludo com reação infl amatória exuberante, exsudativa e alopécia local acompanhadas de febre. O exame bacteriológico foi negativo e o micológico revelou Trichophyton mentagrophytes. Foram medicados com fl ucloxacilina endovenosa, antifúngicos orais (griseofulvina e itraconazol), corticoide e antifúngico tópicos. A resposta foi favorável com evolução lenta para a cura com área de alopécia residual. Conclusão: Estes casos destacam -se pela sua raridade e ilustram a exuberância das manifestações clínicas desta entidade. O diagnóstico precoce, a identificação e tratamento da fonte de contágio e as medidas de higiene e vigilância sanitária são primordiais para o controlo da infecção.