Improving the tools to cope with a changing climate

KEVIN HENNESSY

Director at Climate Comms

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This article is an edited abstract of an assessment of services developed in Australia to help plan for climate change. It is taken from a recent paper published in the journal Climate Services

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The demand in Australia for climate-change services has grown substantially in recent decades.

Such services have four key components:

1. Data and Information
2. Guidance
3. Decision-support tools
4. Enabling activities, such as knowledge brokering and capacity building. 

Climate Comms looked at six case studies from the past decade of national and sectoral climate-change services in Australia: Climate Change in Australia (CCiA); CoastAdapt; the Electricity Sector Climate Information (ESCI) portal; Climate Services for Agriculture (CSA); AdaptNRM for natural resources; and the Australian Climate Service (ASC). The aim was to identify national, system-level patterns in how climate-change services are designed, delivered and used in the Australian context.

Our findings highlight strengths and weaknesses. Australian climate-change services are distinguished by their strong scientific foundations, extensive publicly available data and growing adoption across sectors. The climate-change service ecosystem, however, is fragmented, governed unevenly, and shows variable alignment with user needs.

Information is often perceived as complex or difficult to apply, and many services lack sustained funding, coordination and quality assurance mechanisms. Across the case studies, consistent themes emerged relating to the importance of strategic vision, coordinated governance, user-oriented design, investment in enabling capabilities, and ongoing monitoring and evaluation.

These insights contribute to a better understanding of how national climate-change service systems evolve and the factors that influence their effectiveness in supporting decision-making during climate change.

Six services we sampled

CCiA - Climate Change in Australia‍

CCiA is a popular climate data portal that has utility for a broad range of users. It has 12 tools for visualizing and downloading climate data, as well as regional summaries, brochures, reports, journal papers, training modules and user-guidance. The tools have three ratings: basic, intermediate and advanced.

Many users, however, reported little or no confidence in finding and using the available information. They wanted more guidance, location/sector-specific information, updated data, and examples showing how to use the data in a risk assessment.

CoastAdapt

CoastAdapt is a decision support framework developed for coastal managers planning for climate change. The portal is easy to navigate and has different entry points across the spectrum of knowledge, roles and needs. Content is pitched at basic, intermediate and advanced capabilities. It includes sea level and climate data, a risk management framework, 10 information manuals, 86 case studies, impact brochures for various sectors, and risk assessment templates.

Despite its utility, there is no on-going funding for the portal.

Electricity Sector Climate Information

The ESCI portal aims to improve planning and investment decisions for electricity infrastructure. During development, a huge amount of climate data was generated. Despite a lot of engagement, consultation and testing with the sector, there were problems with the co-design process. It took a year to establish the user reference group and to confirm user needs. Eventually, the reference group activities resulted in shared learning, sector ‘champions’ and co-ownership of the outputs.

CSA

CSA is an agricultural climate service. My Climate View is a popular online tool for advising farmers about climate changes relevant to their location of interest. The service benefits from a multi-disciplinary team and a co-production process that is iterative, inclusive and collaborative.

Continual updates, however, have focused on improving the inputs to the tools, rather than the outputs, such as supporting user applications, documenting case studies, and monitoring and evaluating outcomes.

AdaptNRM

This CSIRO service geared to natural resource management, involved deep engagement and shared learning to encourage and facilitate cross-organisation and cross-jurisdiction collaboration. The portal has five adaptation modules, co-produced for different users. For each module, information material includes technical guides, datasets, maps, and key message summaries.

Despite advancements in modelling, the portal has not been updated since 2016.

ACS - Australian Climate Service

The ACS aims to provide data, intelligence and expert advice on climate impacts and risks to support decision-making. It has produced nationally consistent downscaled climate projections and Australia's first National Climate Risk Assessment, which informed the National Adaptation Plan.

A review, however, found it had conflicting priorities, governance concerns, information gaps, capability issues, a research-driven focus rather than a user-driven focus, a sub-optimal funding structure, a slow response to user requests, and limited strategic vision.

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Practical implications

Australia has a complex ecosystem of climate-change services provided by government agencies, consultants, universities and non-government organisations (NGOs). The users of these services include government agencies, private sector organisations, NGOs, educators and researchers, each of which has distinct needs, capabilities and resources.

The utility of climate change services is mixed. Based on the six case studies and a broader literature review, five themes or lessons emerged for improving national-level climate-change service systems:

An ambitious vision for climate-change services in Australia

A vision, strategy and resources could be collectively developed to provide the necessary direction, inspiration and support for building the next generation of climate-change services. Core products and services could be delivered through a central publicly-funded portal, with differentiated products and services for various sectors and regions delivered by public-private partnerships, and specialised products and services delivered by the private sector.

Enhanced governance, including leadership and institutional arrangements

Governance arrangements should align capacity, responsibilities, authority and accountability. Better coordination and partnerships can reduce fragmentation and duplication of effort, which would improve effectiveness, efficiency and return on investment. Institutional arrangements and mechanisms can better incentivise and support coordination and harmonisation of services.

User-oriented, authoritative, accessible, useful and reliable information

User-oriented products and services should be based on strong stakeholder engagement, co-production and shared learning. Products and services should be reliable, authoritative, quality-assured, accessible, useful and tailored to decision-making. Information can be packaged in different ways for users with different capabilities. Data can be presented in a variety of formats. Decision-support tools can be tailored for specific applications. Quality assurance underpins reliability.

Investments in enablers including knowledge-brokering, capacity-building, research, computational infrastructure and data management

Enabling processes are needed to translate information into knowledge that is fit-for-purpose. Knowledge brokers can assist. Capacity-building activities such as workshops, training and communities of practice can improve technical skills and climate literacy while developing trusted relationships between service providers and users. Case study examples can show how information is used in risk assessments and can guide adaptation planning. Enduring support for fundamental and applied research and development is critical, along with computational infrastructure and data management.

Sustained and enhanced support for monitoring, evaluation, and reporting to enable ongoing learning and improvement

Service providers should monitor progress against objectives, evaluate outputs and customer satisfaction, report achievements and gaps, and assess opportunities for learning and improvement. Performance metrics should go beyond delivery of products and services to include a broader set of risk management outcomes.

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References

[1] Hennessy, K. et al. (2026) The scope and utility of climate change services: case studies from Australia. Climate Services 43: 100695 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cliser.2026.100695 

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