The United States COVID-19 Forecast Hub dataset

Academic researchers, government agencies, industry groups, and individuals have produced forecasts at an unprecedented scale during the COVID-19 pandemic. To leverage these forecasts, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) partnered with an academic research lab at the University of Massachusetts Amherst to create the US COVID-19 Forecast Hub. Launched in April 2020, the Forecast Hub is a dataset with point and probabilistic forecasts of incident cases, incident hospitalizations, incident deaths, and cumulative deaths due to COVID-19 at county, state, and national, levels in the United States. Included forecasts represent a variety of modeling approaches, data sources, and assumptions regarding the spread of COVID-19. The goal of this dataset is to establish a standardized and comparable set of short-term forecasts from modeling teams. These data can be used to develop ensemble models, communicate forecasts to the public, create visualizations, compare models, and inform policies regarding COVID-19 mitigation. These open-source data are available via download from GitHub, through an online API, and through R packages

Towards a more integrated role for early career researchers in the IPCC process

The involvement of early career researchers (ECRs) has been limited during the past Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment cycles. We conducted a global survey among ECRs and interviewed key experts of the IPCC process. Our results show that ECRs are highly motivated to become actively involved in the IPCC process but face a number of barriers to contribute. Mutually beneficial ways forward on how ECRs could contribute are outlined here, and recommendations to implement these paths are suggested to IPCC as well as to ECRs. Concluding, we show that ECRs have great potential to actively contribute to the IPCC process for the continuity of the IPCC as well as to climate science in general.Fil: Gulizia, Carla. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Centro de Investigaciones del Mar y la Atmósfera. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Centro de Investigaciones del Mar y la Atmósfera; ArgentinaFil: Langendijk, Gaby. Climate Service Center Germany; AlemaniaFil: Huang Lachmann, Jo Ting. Climate Service Center Germany (gerics); AlemaniaFil: de Amorim Borges, Pablo. Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina; BrasilFil: Flach, Rafaela. Universitat Hamburg; AlemaniaFil: Githaiga, Cicilia. Institute For Advanced Sustainability Studies; AlemaniaFil: Rahimi, Mohammad. Semnan University; Irá

Societal local and regional resiliency spurred by contextualized climate services : The role of culture in co-production

Climate information plays a foundational role in achieving a green recovery and climate neutrality in Europe, and a central one for a climate resilient Europe. This role can materialize if climate information is delivered appropriately and used effectively. Climate services, understood as the provision of climate information for use in decision making, have been created to provide climate information addressing these aspects. The utility of climate services is determined by the level of user engagement and co-design, employed during their development, while resource limitations for any of these aspects constrain their full potential. Co-design together with users is increasingly seen as a necessary good practice approach to provide efficient services that bring together supply and demand. In this paper, we focus on how climate services can contribute to climate neutrality by considering the cultural dimension of the users and their regions for whom specific climate services are co-designed. We specifically address dimensions of vulnerability and resilience to changing climatic conditions in five case studies worldwide while analysing the influence of culture on risk coping and enabling mechanism of key stakeholders and their needs for specific climate services in these regions. We found that user needs, desires and actions hinge on value prepositions formed by specific socio-cultural, climatic, spatial and bio-ecological contexts. Hence, when co-designing climate services, it is vital to understand users’ needs, based on their values and experiences with climate and weather and to seek ways to influence, alter and change them

Co-production of Climate Services : A diversity of approaches and good practice from the ERA4CS projects (2017–2021)

This guide presents a joint effort of projects funded under the European Research Area for Climate Services (ERA4CS) (http://www.jpi-climate.eu/ERA4CS), a co- funded action initiated by JPI Climate with co-funding by the European Union (Grant 690462), 15 national public Research Funding Organisations (RFOs), and 30 Research Performing Organisations (RPOs) from 18 European countries. This guide sets out to increase the understanding of different pathways, methods, and approaches to improve knowledge co-production of climate services with users as a value-added activity of the ERA4CS Programme. Reflecting on the experiences of 16 of the 26 projects funded under ERA4CS, this guide aims to define and recommend good practices for transdisciplinary knowledge co-production of climate services to researchers, users, funding agencies, and private sector service providers. Drawing on responses from ERA4CS project teams to a questionnaire and interviews, this guide maps the diversity of methods for stakeholder identification, involvement, and engagement. It also conducts an analysis of methods, tools, and mechanisms for engagement as well as evaluation of co-production processes. This guide presents and discusses good practice examples based on the review of the ERA4CS projects, identifying enablers and barriers for key elements in climate service co-production processes. These were: namely (i) Forms of Engagement; (ii) Entry Points for Engagement; and, (iii) Intensity of Involvement. It further outlines key ingredients to enhance the quality of co-producing climate services with users and stakeholders. Based on the analysis of the lessons learned from ERA4CS projects, as well as a review of key concepts in the recent literature on climate service co-production, we provide a set of recommendations for researchers, users, funders and private sector providers of climate services. This report is not externally peer-reviewed</p