A systematic evaluation of climate services and decision support tools for climate change risk management

Climate services are tools and resources aimed at translating climate information to support practical management of the risks and opportunities presented by climate variability and change. Sometimes referred to as decision support tools, they provide information at different spatial and temporal scales ranging from seasonal forecasting to long term projections for policy development and strategic planning. With the development and increasingly widespread use of climate services, different evaluation criteria have also been proposed to assess how well climate services support decision making and suggest ways to make them more effective. This includes the Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS) which was developed by the United Nations in 2011, as well as ethical frameworks focused on integrity, transparency, humility, and collaboration. In this study, publicly available climate services and associated decision support tools were evaluated following a previously-proposed evaluation framework. This framework includes four design elements: 1) problem identification and the decision-making context, 2) characteristics, tailoring, and dissemination of the climate information, 3) governance and structure of the service, including the process by which it is developed, and 4) the socioeconomic value of the service. We focus our comparison on climate services developed by U.S. government agencies with an emphasis on climate change risk management and adaptation. Relative strengths of these tools and services is discussed based on different evaluation criteria. This evaluation demonstrates the degree to which existing climate services and decision support tools meet the objectives proposed by evaluation frameworks and provides suggestions how these tools can be better tailored to support adaptation decision making. Ultimately, this evaluation can be used to support better decision making that uses existing climate services and improved development of climate services that can meet adaptation decision needs.