Climate services support decision-making and planning processes and can play a key role in avoiding maladaptation. To support the development of climate resilience and to ensure that mitigation and adaptation efforts are based on factual information LMU Munich develops climate services for the Main river basin as part of the German ARSINOE case study together with VKU.
To ensure that user-needs are met the ARSINOE partners actively seek out practitioners who are involved in the planning and implementation of mitigation and adaptation projects. A workshop in November showed that the interest in climate change and its consequences remains large.
Following an introduction of ARSINOE, climate services and their potential uses, representatives from public utilities, shipping, fishing, and agriculture as well as local and regional authorities shared how they currently use climate services and their thoughts on their future application. There was great interest in impact analyses that go beyond conventional climate services. For example, participants asked about the occurrence of conditions that lead to peak water demand. There were inquiries about the effects of a changed climate on working conditions in summer, or the effects of high temperatures on the temperature of supply infrastructure. Other areas of interest were groundwater recharge and surface water runoffs as well as the effects of climate change on ecosystems.
By discussing, what problems the provision of new information could solve, what climate services are needed and how the information should be provided, the ARSINOE partners created a solid footing for the joint design of climate services. This design process will continue in the following months.