Climate Exchange

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apacity

evelopment

of representatives of the partner organizations and the funding

organizations. Stakeholders of

Climateguide.fi

comprise the users,

potential content producers and potential funding organizations

such as ministries and the Academy of Finland. A stakeholder

meeting is organized once or twice a year.

Operational decisions and implementation of the maintenance

and development tasks are the responsibility of the operational

team, which consists of the project coordinator, science editor,

representative of the communication departments of both SYKE

and FMI, and the head of the Climate Service Centre of FMI.

The portal development project was evaluated using feedback

from user seminars and the Internet (including Facebook and

the feedback form on the site), Google Analytics and the Steering

Group. These will remain the principal means for evaluation in

the future.

A partnership approach

It was necessary to form a consortium of partners to develop

Climateguide.fi

portal. None of the partners institutions could

have produced the output by themselves or without other part-

ners. The

Climateguide.fi

website involved almost 100 experts

for varying periods of time during the three year development

phase of the portal; a few experts were employed full time.

Programmers, GIS experts, graphic designers and concept plan-

ners were employed with the external funding provided by the

Life+ programme.

Developing and designing the mode of information presen-

tation and how data is made available for visualization was a

laborious process involving climate science experts as well as

graphic and concept designers.

The texts, which have been written by experts

and reviewed by peers, avoid scientific terminology,

aiming for clarity and ease of understanding for the

lay reader. Interested readers are guided towards

advanced information sources and portal users can

give feedback on articles. This has proven useful, as

a few articles have been further defined according to

user feedback.

The users of the service are mostly not climate

information experts. With the help of the background

and guidance material in the portal, they are able

to research the issue from their own perspectives,

regions and sectors. Yet further information and

external support for interpretation of the informa-

tion may be needed – for example, when long-term

investments are made.

Innovations to meet needs

The concept of

Climateguide.fi

itself is an innova-

tion. It provides a multi-organizational national

platform for climate change information and data

dissemination, where all aspects of climate change

are covered.

There are various other highlights, including:

• Several innovations to the structure of the portal –

for example, the sector-specific pages of Community

Response Wizard are divided into Mitigation,

Adaptation and Solutions

• The climate scenario selector tool in the Climate

Impacts map tool of the Maps, Graphs and Data

component helps users visualize uncertainty

• Visualizations

facilitate easy updates to the

information and data. They are also designed to be

easily transferable to other platforms and in different

languages

• The history of the Earth’s climate has been displayed

in a novel interactive visualization.

What next?

One goal for

Climateguide.fi

is to become an established

starting point for citizens in their search for climate

change information in Finland. Another goal is for all

major climate change information producers – research

institutions, universities, ministries and public authori-

ties – to become content producers of Climateguide.

fi. The website can also be scaled up by developing

new tailored sections for various users on the portal.

However, providing permanent resources to guarantee

steady development of the portal, in addition to the

specific development projects, remains a challenge for

the future.

The concept for the portal can set a good example

for climate services in other countries. Exchange of

experiences from the development phase, user feed-

back from the operational phase and potentially also

exchange of modules between climate portals could be

beneficial forms of collaboration between climate serv-

ices and could strengthen and broaden climate change

communication.

Source: Finnish Environment Institute

Figure 4: Example view of the Climate Impacts map tool, showing modelled

snow duration for the future period 2070-2099. The scenario view also shows

the climate scenario selector tool.