Nature Geoscience
Nature Geoscience 7, 78–79 (2014)
doi:10.1038/ngeo2081
Published online 30 January 2014

Commentary
Science to prevent disasters
Erin Coughlan de Perez, Fleur Monasso, Maarten van Aalst & Pablo Suarez
Affiliations

Excerpt
Scientific climate information can save lives and livelihoods, yet its application is not always straightforward. Much of the available information does not describe the risk of threshold events, and misunderstandings can leave society less resilient to climate shocks.

Predictable weather events continue to result in disasters in many locations. Despite this predictability, those who will be most affected often do not receive warnings when hazardous events are likely to happen. At least in part, this failure of communication is a result of many government agencies and humanitarian organizations still being insufficiently connected to climate science1. The Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Centre2 aims to bridge this gap between scientific understanding and decision-making by facilitating action based on climate information, in the context of both humanitarian work and longer-term development. In particular, we provide support to create early warning systems that characterize risk across timescales, from hours or weeks to years or even decades ahead of a potential emergency. These warnings then systematically trigger actions to improve vulnerability reduction, preparedness and response — for example, building drainage channels to prevent long-term flooding, or training volunteers who can help manage an evacuation when necessary.

Our early warning systems require interfaces between information providers and users. Especially when scientific findings are to be used across timescales, we need to draw on broader information than that provided by operational services (such as meteorological agencies), and also consult the wider scientific community and published literature. Based on our experience at the intersection of science and risk management practice, we argue that four features make publications in climate research particularly useful and actionable: a focus on extremes or threshold events rather than average conditions; characterization of the full range of variability over time; attention to implications of model uncertainties; and a clear, jargon-free and succinct outline of the main findings of a paper…