Bridging climate science and adaptation: a perspective on the construction of National Climate Scenarios

As weather and climate hazards intensify due to anthropogenic climate change, the demand for authoritative, science-based, decision-relevant information on future climate risks has never been greater. National Climate Scenarios have emerged in many countries as an central pathway for translating advances in physical climate science into usable information on future weather and climate risks for adaptation planning, risk management, and policy.

Here, we will take a conceptual and forward-looking perspective on the role and design of National Climate Scenarios in assessing future weather and climate hazards. Drawing on a comparative review of National Climate Scenarios from ten countries, I outline current practices at the science–policy interface and discuss how these national climate services navigate the tension between scientific credibility, uncertainty, and societal relevance. While the scenario products increasingly incorporate sophisticated climate model information, gaps remain between what users request (particularly regarding extremes and spatial detail) and what the climate science community can robustly deliver.

I highlight four challenges that are highly relevant for the future development of National Climate Scenarios: (i) the co-development of credible and usable products with diverse user communities; (ii) the representation and communication of uncertainty; (iii) the integration of multiple lines of evidence across models, scales, and methods; and (iv) the treatment of extreme events and extreme climate outcomes (low likelihood, high impact). Addressing these challenges requires both continued disciplinary advances in physical climate science, including the modelling and attribution of (unprecedented or compound) weather and climate extremes as well as stronger interdisciplinary collaboration with social sciences, impact modelling, and climate services research.

On a connected European continent, there is a clear opportunity to build a European network connecting the National Climate Scenario-producers, scientists and users, to strengthen scientific excellence, improve efficiency and enhance usability of climate information particularly at transnational levels. This contribution aims to set the stage for a discussion on what harmonised, but nation-specific, Climate Scenarios might look like.