Co-produced storylines of climate hazard uncertainty for the heritage sector

Climate storylines, or narratives, are gaining traction in climate science and services as a means of producing and communicating application relevant information. We have performed case studies of co-produced storylines to assess their usefulness and usability as a process of producing information, as well as communicating it in a final stakeholder product. This aims to add to the limited pool of examples of the real-world application of these concepts. 

We present an example of working with the heritage sector in the UK to co-produce storylines of summer temperature and winter rainfall hazards. This is a sector with a variety of assets and operations spread over countries, clearly exposed to weather and climate hazards, and organisations are beginning to perform risk assessments and adaptation planning. The stakeholder, and a wider focus group of sector representatives from around Europe, provided feedback and suggestions which add to the limited body of evidence assessing storylines as both a process and product directly with users. A particular focus was to expose the uncertainty in climate projection products and uncover the application relevance of this. We showcase how a weather forecasting product, DECIDER weather patterns, can be used on climate timescales to help understand hazards and the role of different types of uncertainty.  

A major finding was that the value of the co-production process was highlighted, which may be even more important than the storylines themselves for building credibility and confidence in the climate projection information. Framing projection information using past events and explaining uncertainty and regional variations using the weather patterns were found to be key aspects of the information for the stakeholder. Working through the process of tailoring the information to an application relevant range also proved to be an effective mechanism for enabling discussion about the risk appetite and uncertainty budget of the related planning and decisions.