Matching the production of scientific knowledge to needs across scales:
The implications of climate adaptation decision making for science policy
Lisa Dilling, Center for Science and Technology Policy Research and
Environmental Studies, University of Colorado, Boulder, 80304
Email: ldilling@colorado.edu
The use of seasonal to interannual climate forecasts (SCFs) has been
studied in several different sectors and countries over the past two decades.
Research has found that the use of these forecasts in applied settings is mixed.
While use is increasing as practitioners become more familiar with the
technology, it is also clear that there are missed opportunities as well. The
factors that constrain or foster usability can be grouped into two main categories:
the process of knowledge production and the context of potential use. Both
categories of factors are important in the ultimate usability of science for decision
making in specific contexts.
There is increasing interest in adaptation to climate change as both an
area of research and an area of societal response. More and more public
agencies, from municipal water utilities to public lands agencies are becoming
aware of the need to consider climate change in their actions and planning.
However, given the deep uncertainty that surrounds climate change impacts at
the regional scale in many areas, it is not always clear how or in what way
decision makers should be responding to climate change. Research has
explored how to make decisions “robust” to conditions of deep uncertainty, but
there has been less attention to how the scientific enterprise should respond
when being called upon to support decision making.
Organized climate science in the United States began with a global
focus—models and observations were conducted largely at the global scale, with
some attempts to project future climate at the sub-continental scale. Over the
past decade, the emphasis has shifted more toward the sub-continental and
regional scale as interest in the future impacts of climate change become of more
interest. How these uncertain projections are the most usable input to decision
makers seeking to make robust decisions remains to be seen however.
Another key finding from research on the use of SCFs by decision makers
is that iterativity, or ongoing interactions between researchers and potential users,
is critical to the usability of science. In the past, with the climate science policy
emphasis on global scale modeling and observations, this linkage to potential
users was not much attended to except as science might input to international
processes such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or national
level positions in the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. Most of
the research funded in the U.S. for climate science is funded by federal agencies
at the national level. Now, as adaptation becomes a stronger part of the decision
making landscape at levels from the smallest coastal town to the largest
agricultural corporation, it is not as clear how to best organize science in order to
support decision making across this wide variety of scales.
This paper seeks to evaluate the structure of climate science policy in the
U.S. as it relates to supporting adaptation decision making, with a particular
emphasis on scale. The paper will review the science policy landscape, give
specific decision making case examples, and evaluate alternatives in light of the
changing needs for climate science.