The prevailing paradigm for regional climate risk assessment has been “predict then act”, with contextualization of climate information performed mainly as a post-processing step. There has been increasing recognition of the limitations of this paradigm, which are especially apparent at the regional and local scale. Yet there is very often a wealth of climate information relevant to climate risk available at the various scales, e.g., from historical knowledge of extreme events. The science challenge is bridging between the global and the local sources of information and making the information meaningful for specific applications.

One way of tackling this challenge is to start from the decision context, and only bring in the climate information that is relevant to the already uncertain and complex specific risk landscape. This perspective inverts the construction of climate information, making it necessarily contextual. The approach has been gaining traction around the world in recent years. Experience shows that to be effective it needs to happen through self-sustaining, locally based Communities of Practice, rather than through limited term externally driven projects. The goal of the WCRP Lighthouse Activity ‘My Climate Risk’ is to mainstream the approach and help empower local and regional actors to develop their own Communities of Practice, drawing on the full wealth of climate information from across the global community.

The purpose of this session is to draw on and learn from the experience of groups already engaged in this sort of bottom-up, locally driven approach to climate risk, to help guide the development of the ‘My Climate Risk’ Lighthouse Activity. Studies are welcomed that discuss both the benefits and the challenges of developing such Communities of Practice based on actual experience, including not only scientific aspects (e.g., quality assurance, climate information development) but also ethical ones (e.g., power structures, trust).

This session aligns with one of the main strategic goals of the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) to develop climate information for decision-makers on a local to regional scale and, more generally, to bridge climate science and society. In addition, the session accords with the AGU main strategic goal of catalyzing discovery and solutions to scientific and societal challenges, particularly acknowledging that discovery and solution-based science requires collaboration and communication across physical and disciplinary boundaries.

To facilitate diversity amongst the participants and achieve the largest possible global reach, the session will be virtual-only.

Suggested invited speakers:

- Debra Hudson (TBC), Australian Bureau of Meteorology, discussing the experience of the ‘Forewarned is Forearmed’ project (http://www.bom.gov.au/research/projects/FWFA/) which provides decision support for the agricultural sector in Australia on seasonal timescales.

- Jean Ometto (Confirmed), Rede CLIMA - Brazilian Network on Global Climate Change, discussing the digital platform AdaptaBrasil (https://adaptabrasil.mcti.gov.br/), which provides maps of risk assessment for end users and stakeholders by merging climate and social data.

• WCRP: World Climate Research Programme -