Throughout human history, we have learned to adapt to the day-to-day variations in our weather alongside longer-term, but perhaps less noticeable, changes in our climate. We have learned how to use weather records and climatic information to help us engineer bridges and hospitals, grow drought- and flood-tolerant crops and build our overall resilience to extreme weather.
Largely, we have assumed that the underlying climate isn’t really changing. But we have been caught off-guard when shifts in our climate have altered the environment around us. We know today that our climate is not stationary; in fact it is changing rapidly. We need to create tools and share knowledge to help us deal with the emerging challenges these rapid changes pose to our societies. We need Climate Services.
Climate science is an umbrella term which covers a multitude of specialislms within the wider field. Climate Services is one of those specialisms in which climate data is used to help make longer term predicitions for governments, infrastructure providers, the agricultral industries and so on to enable them to better allocate rescources more efficiently.
EUPORIAS was a four year, pan-European partnership, led by the Met Office, researching and exploring potential models of Climate Service provision. BellHouse was commissioned to celebrate the end of this work.
On the blog I have recorded the process of setting up BellHouse at the Met Office and the conference itself, alongside selected audio recordings of playbacks of delegates speeches. In addition I have added information about some of the data that Met Office staff played through BellHouse in the following days.
