The physical risks associated with a changing climate pose significant threats to societal, economic, and environmental systems. Effectively managing these risks depends heavily on scientific knowledge, including climate science. Adaptation efforts remain uneven across sectors and regions, with varying levels of progress, ambition, and implementation capacity. Quantitative studies are essential for understanding the actions being taken and the drivers behind adaptation. Much of the existing literature in this field often relies on small-sample surveys or interviews and tends to focus on individual sectors, such as agriculture or tourism. However, sensitivity to climate risks and adaptation needs vary widely across sectors and types of organizations. There is a pressing need for a more comprehensive understanding of how users perceive climate risks and how they manage them in practice across different sectors.

This study contributes to the literature by exploring the extent to which climate-sensitive organizations in Europe are aware of climate risks and actively integrate climate risk management into their organisational decision-making processes. The research addresses the following questions:

• How does concern about climate and weather risk compare with concern about other types of organisational risks?
• What are the main drivers of climate risk management in organisations?
• To what extent do organisations currently use weather and/or climate information?
• What are unmet needs for climate information provision?

To answer these questions, a large-scale survey was designed and distributed via the Qualtrics survey platform to professionals working in risk analysis and management roles within businesses and organizations across Europe (n=1864) .

The results reveal significant concerns regarding physical climate risks, alongside broader concerns about other organizational risks. Organizations with longer planning horizons exhibited higher concern compared to those with only short planning horizons. Risks to human safety and past experiences of extreme events being identified as the strongest drivers of Climate Risk Management (CRM) and climate information use. The ordered logit model shows that experience of weather/climate-related events raises the likelihood of an organisation carrying out CRM by 150%. Although most respondents indicated that their organization’s longest planning horizon for important decisions was between 1–5 years, the most commonly used sources of climate information were weather forecasts, followed by observations, sub-seasonal, and seasonal forecasts, respectively. A small proportion of respondents reported using longer-term climate information. While current users reported generally high satisfaction with the information they currently received, a desire for easier to understand and more accurate/reliable information was expressed. The implications for climate services will be discussed based on the results.

How to cite: Grainger, S., Dessai, S., Geng, K., Taylor, A., Saklani, S., Davidović, U., Kržič, A., and Mysiak, J.: Climate risk concerns and management among European organisations, EMS Annual Meeting 2025, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 7–12 Sep 2025, EMS2025-96, https://doi.org/10.5194/ems2025-96, 2025.

Climate services and co-production efforts aim to support climate adaptation by making forecasts and predictions more usable. In recent years, demand-driven approaches have become a key strategy. However, many initiatives still prioritize improving data over understanding real-world decision needs. Case studies often rely on unclear sampling, limited methods for exploring decision-making and a narrow focus on information provision. This limits our understanding of the true demand for better climate predictions, especially in relation to other, potentially more impactful, levers for adaptation.

Here, we apply a behavioral and social science perspective to evaluate the actual and potential role of improved climate predictions in supporting effective societal adaptation. To this end, we select two most climate-sensitive sectors in Germany—agriculture and forestry—as test beds to examine how predictions on the 10-year horizon (could) inform decision-making under uncertainty. Through four expert focus groups (N = 24), we interview systematically sampled participants with deep sectoral knowledge of climate impacts, adaptation options, and real-world decision contexts. We identify weather- and climate-sensitive decisions, elicit decision strategies and information needs, and evaluate the relative importance of improved predictions compared to other factors related to capabilities, opportunities, and motivation.

Our findings reveal that climate predictions are currently not used in practice. Instead, experts rely on observations, weather information, and regionalized projections. They report and work with decision strategies such as worst-case planning or diversification that do not depend on precise forecasts. Nevertheless, participants expressed interest in more informative predictions that go beyond means. Higher resolution was not always seen as essential and trade-offs considered possible. Importantly, demand was shaped not only by information needs, but also by cognitive, institutional, and motivational constraints. Understanding and articulating demand for climate information is thus a complex task—what users actually need, their true demand, often differs from what is assumed.

Our results suggest that better societal adaptation may mostly not require better predictions, but better integration of existing information into real-world decision-making. This includes prioritizing contextual relevance, simplifying outputs without oversimplifying meaning, and addressing the behavioral and institutional constraints that hinder information uptake. We show how research in this direction can look like and how this can be achieved methodologically.

How to cite: Rüsenberg, F. and Fleischhut, N.: Beyond Better Data: Understanding the True Demand for Climate Predictions in Adaptation Practice, EMS Annual Meeting 2025, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 7–12 Sep 2025, EMS2025-233, https://doi.org/10.5194/ems2025-233, 2025.

The new Local Authority Climate Service (LACS) (launched in October 2024) offers a novel method of delivering UK climate projection information to end users. The LACS has been developed in response to a need from Local Authorities (LAs) for clear and authoritative information to raise awareness on the need to adapt to climate change, identifying and justifying priority risks and opportunities, and gathering evidence to support adaptation planning. The LACS platform enables LAs to: access ready-to-use climate information for their local area, develop a climate report summarising key results for awareness raising, obtain helpful resources and further support for adaptation planning. To explore how this method of delivering climate information is being used, tailored and communicated by users, twenty-two interviews were conducted between December 2024 and March 2025 with staff at Local and Combined Authorities in the UK. These were semi-structured, online interviews each lasting approx. 1 hour. We employed thematic analysis on the interview transcripts to explore current engagement with and anticipated use of the LACS, user feedback on functionality and usability of the service, as well as specific insights on the use of the LACS to progress organisational adaptation. Subsequently, the insights of these interviews fed into the development of three case studies which outline the current practical use of LACS in adaptation at the local level. The findings provide key insights for other European national met organisations or other climate service providers supporting adaptation and resilience planning at the local scale. Municipal planners need easy to access, easy to understand and easy to apply climate information, that moves beyond just greater granularity but considers climate change in the form of changing impacts relevant to their service delivery. Moving climate data away from the highly technical to the highly useable.

How to cite: Walton, P., Lorenz, S., Davenport, T., Ramsey, V., and Findley, H.: The use and usability of the Local Authority Climate Service in UK Local Authorities, EMS Annual Meeting 2025, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 7–12 Sep 2025, EMS2025-440, https://doi.org/10.5194/ems2025-440, 2025.

How to cite: Bruno Soares, M., Walton, P., Schacher, J., Mittal, N., and Fung, F.:  Exploring climate service purveyor engagement and use of national climate projections , EMS Annual Meeting 2025, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 7–12 Sep 2025, EMS2025-556, https://doi.org/10.5194/ems2025-556, 2025.

ClimaMeter is a real-time platform designed to provide rapid, science-based assessments of extreme weather events and their links to climate change. ClimaMeter’s methodology relies on identifying large-scale atmospheric circulation patterns and comparing them to historical data, analysing how the intensity of extreme weather events have changed because of anthropogenic climate change or natural climate variability.  The object studied (i.e. "the event") is a surface-pressure pattern over a certain region and averaged over a certain number of days, that has led to extreme weather conditions.  The methodology consists of looking for weather conditions similar to those that caused the extreme event of interest. By leveraging historical climate data, machine learning, and real-time weather observations, ClimaMeter delivers near-instantaneous attribution results, enabling informed decision-making in a time when media cycles and public attention are brief. This speed is crucial for climate action, as it helps policymakers, emergency responders, and the public understand the role of climate change in specific extreme events and take timely, effective measures. This allows for quicker, data-driven responses to disasters, such as  recent heatwaves in Europe, floods in Africa, the Los Angeles Wildfires or the Hurricanes Milton and Helene, by informing disaster response, infrastructure planning, and resilience-building efforts. ClimaMeter also plays a key role in countering climate change misinformation, offering clear, evidence-based explanations to the public and media. By bridging the gap between scientific research and policy applications, ClimaMeter supports climate action, promotes public awareness, and aids in the development of adaptation and mitigation strategies to address the growing risks posed by climate change.

How to cite: Faranda, D. and the The ClimaMeter team: Enhancing public understanding of extreme weather events in a changing climate through ClimaMeter, EMS Annual Meeting 2025, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 7–12 Sep 2025, EMS2025-279, https://doi.org/10.5194/ems2025-279, 2025.

In West Africa, flood risk has increased exponentially since the beginning of the 21st century, due to both the growing magnitude and frequency of flood hazards and the rising exposure of urban and peri-urban areas. In the Sahel, in particular, floods have a severe impact on livelihoods, infrastructure, and production systems, thereby threatening sustainable development. The recent Early Warnings for All (EW4ALL) initiative, promoted by the World Meteorological Organization and other development partners, has emphasized the critical role of early warning systems in reducing the impact of natural disasters—especially floods.

In West Africa, flood early warning systems remain largely at an embryonic stage. However, recent experiences have laid the groundwork for strengthening national capacities in certain countries. Among these, the Système Local d’Alerte Précoce contre les Inondations de la Sirba (SLAPIS), developed in Niger between 2018 and 2020, has shown that a co-development approach—integrating both top-down and bottom-up methods—can effectively empower local communities and technical services to mitigate flood impacts.

This study presents the evolution of SLAPIS into a transboundary system between Niger and Burkina Faso, maintaining its community- and impact-based orientation while incorporating new hydraulic, hydrological, and meteorological forecasting components. The approach promotes interoperability with existing hydrological forecasting systems such as GLOFAS, HYPE, and SATH, and facilitates their localization and optimization. Moreover, the use of flood scenarios enables the linkage of observations and forecasts with hydrological thresholds, flood-prone zones, and potential impacts. The integration of citizen science in local flood observation and downstream alerting further enhances community awareness and ownership.

The expanded system, known as SLAPIS Sahel, is currently under development across the entire Sirba River basin (39,000 km² shared between Burkina Faso and Niger) and along the segment of the Niger River between the Sirba confluence and the city of Niamey in Niger.

The study suggests that investments aimed at improving existing tools and knowledge, and at reinforcing transboundary cooperation, coordination, and collaboration to reduce the impacts of hydrometeorological hazards and support the sustainable development of rural and urban areas, can be highly effective—provided that co-development approaches are appropriately applied.

How to cite: Tarchiani, V., Ganora, D., Vesipa, R., Pasi, F., Capecchi, V., Piras, M., Belcore, E., Bacci, M., De Filippis, T., and Tiepolo, M.: Building Bridges Across Borders to co-develop flood early warning in the Sahel, EMS Annual Meeting 2025, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 7–12 Sep 2025, EMS2025-593, https://doi.org/10.5194/ems2025-593, 2025.