Mapping innovation: a global outlook of Climate Services
In 2015, the European Commission identified climate services as tools capable of improving resilience to climate change. As stated in the European Roadmap for Climate Services (2015), climate services are defined as “the transformation of climate-related data […] into customized products such as projections, forecasts, information, trends, economic analyses assessments – including technology assessments – counseling on best practices, development and evaluation of solutions and any other service in relation to climate that may be of use for society at large“. Climate services in particular provide climate information in a way that assists the decision making processes.
The growing interest on their development and use has led to significant efforts in the research arena: number of social science fields, spanning from sociology to economics, have effectively complemented the work of meteorology, climatology and physical sciences.
On April 17, 2018, CMCC researcher Francesca Larosa (RAAS Division) hold the CMCC webinar titled “Mapping innovation: a global outlook of Climate Services” while presenting the preliminary results of a study aimed at mapping research in the field of climate services through network analysis and bibliometrics.
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Using publications records from Scopus database for the period 2000-2018, Larosa presented the network of authors, actors and institutions producing research on climate services, exploring the contribution of the diverse disciplines in filling the knowledge gaps and pushing the research frontier forward.
Results highlight that English-speaking and western continental EU countries are dominant in shaping research on climate services which is progressively shifting the attention towards adaptation-focused and user-centered perspectives. Analysis from projects at EU level underlines a clear North-West vs South-East climate knowledge divide in EU, with a small cluster of organizations dominating the knowledge flow.