Climate Exchange

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apacity

evelopment

• Scientists such as environmentalists, agronomists,

hydrologists, geographers, economists and sociologists,

dealing with impacts or adaptation strategies. Some

have established linkages between meteorology and

climatology (such as agronomists, hydrologists), and

have already initiated contact with climate groups.

Others need stonger advice and closer guidance.

• Intermediate users are, for example, consulting

companies involved in environment and policy

management and planning, or outfits supporting

adaptation for private companies or administrative

entities. They also need appropriate information

and support and will act as intermediate users for

climate scenarios and products. In some cases,

they still need to raise awareness of local impacts

from global changes.

• Climate scientists have been identified as partners

of the project. The added pressure on scientific

teams is increasing, bringing some scientists away

from theoretical science to applied science. There

is a need to deliver climate scenarios operationally

and to allow scientists to focus on the challenges

populations will face.

A user committee was created at the beginning of the

project, to help define effective and strategic needs,

evaluate prototypes using beta testers, validate the

choices made by the project team, and ensure that Drias

will continue to meet users expectations.

Drias is positioned at the interface between actors.

A layer of intermediate users – or translators – is

gradually appearing in the form of engineers from

the meteorological service, or from private companies

already deploying activities in the field of environment,

or climate experts hired by local organizations. Drias is

serving these users, who were highly involved in the

development of the portal and will continue to contrib-

ute to the evolution of the service.

Drias must primarily be seen as a facility. It is an answer

to a growing need for information, tools and methodol-

ogy to address adaptation. On closer inspection, it can

be seen as the emerged part of a more fundamental trend

moving the entire climate community, a first step toward

‘services’. Drias contributes to assist and support impact

studies, providing data through a web portal to allow

different communities to respond to requests for climate

change information. Drias will undoubtedly foster a new

era for the transfer of climate information between users

and the multi-disciplinary community of climate model-

ling, making it compulsory to:

• Enhance assistance to users and create a new

generation of actors

• Gradually broaden the spectrum of climate information

(and services) to respond to as many people as possible

in an understandable and usable way

• Keep delivering with the principle that scenarios

must be considered while facing the futures of

climate, leading to several hypotheses of emission,

several models and several downscaling methods.

friendly system, delivering products taking various forms, adapted

to climate projections - e.g. recalling users that climate change infor-

mation is not just a deterministic short range weather forecast and

that various scenarios have to be considered. Drias was funded by

the Management and Impact of Climate Change programme of the

French Ministry for Sustainable Development. It focuses on existing

French regional climate projections obtained from national model-

ling groups: IPSL, CERFACS, and CNRM. It delivers all kinds of

climate information from numerical data to tailored climate prod-

ucts and guidance to promote best practices and know-how.

While the project is coordinated by the Department of Climatology

at Météo-France, which is in charge of climatological operations

and services, a multidisciplinary group of users and stakeholders

concerned by climate change issues was also involved. Three catego-

ries of user have been identified, each with their own needs in terms

of climate change information and guidance:

Heat wave in Paris, France, July 2012