Decisions about climate change are complex, costly and have long-term implications. It is therefore vital that such decisions are based on the best available evidence. We need to understand the quality and provenance of that evidence, and whether any assumptions have been made in generating it.
The analysis needed to underpin climate change decisions is like putting together the pieces of a jigsaw. We need observations of weather, climate, water resources and agriculture and other sectors. We also need to analyze the links between these and human and ecosystem development. We need to provide model projections of the future for all these elements. Finally specialists in different sectors need to work with scientists to interpret the information in a way that is relevant to them in order to make informed decisions.
The World Bank's Climate Change Knowledge Portal [1]helps to draw climate change and related information together in one place and is a useful additional tool in the armoury for the decision maker.
The Met Office Hadley Centre in the UK has been preeminent in monitoring, analyzing and projecting climate and climate change and has been and is still a major contributor to IPCC [2]. But more importantly we work closely with government [3] to ensure that their decisions are underpinned by sound science.
Read more » [4]
