Predicting climate impacts for the cause of anticipatory action - climate services for the disaster relief and humanitarian aid sector

The variability of meteorological extreme events in Europe is strongly affected by climate change. As a result, the frequency, duration and intensity as well as the place of occurrence of extremes is changing alongside the socio-economic impacts for European communities. As climate change continues, climate forecasts represent a valuable tool for predicting upcoming high-risk climate conditions in advance to support decision-makers in the implementation of preventive and preparatory measures, also known as anticipatory action. Anticipatory action links weather and climate predictions with risk information to initiate early actions to mitigate potential disaster impacts before a shock occurs and to strengthen long-term emergency preparedness. 

Here, we present an anticipatory action project jointly conducted by Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD) and Deutsches Rotes Kreuz (German Red Cross). The project aims at co-developing DWD’s German Climate Forecast System (GCFS) towards climate impact forecasting, initially for heat-related impacts but also for various other hazards, e.g., cold, wind or precipitation. These impact forecast products are intended to help the authorities as well as relief organizations such as the Red Cross to pre-define measures that can mitigate anticipated impacts, e.g., on particularly vulnerable people. 

As a first step, the GCFS is currently extended to include the forecast of selected temperature extreme indices, including the number of hot days and warm spells, which are key for the evaluation of health and mortality risks. In subsequent steps, the forecast products are jointly evaluated and refined in collaboration with the specific user community (e.g. informing communities and disaster authorities about potential health impacts in care facilities, hospitals, or on rescue and relief personnel) within a co-design process. In our poster we will detail how our transdisciplinary procedure contributes to increasing the performance and usefulness of climate forecasts in order to effectively support decision-makers, emergency and health workers about the expected impacts to mitigate impacts and protect vulnerable groups.