Storylines are introduced in climate science to provide unity of discourse, integrate the physical and socioeconomic components of phenomena, and make climate evolution more tangible. The use of this concept by multiple scholar communities and the novelty of some of its applications renders the concept ambiguous nonetheless, because the term hides behind a wide range of purposes, understandings, and methodologies. This semi-systematic literature review identifies three approaches that use storylines as a keystone concept: scenarios-familiar for their use in IPCC reports-discourseanalytical approaches, and physical climate storylines. After screening peer-reviewed articles that mention climate and storylines, 270 articles are selected, with 158, 55, and 57 in each category. The results indicate that each scholarly community works with a finite and different set of methods and diverging understandings. Moreover, these approaches have received criticism in their assembly of storylines: either for lacking explicitness or for the homogeneity of expertise involved. This article proposes that cross-pollination among the approaches can improve the usefulness and usability of climate-related storylines. Among good practices are the involvement of a broader range of scientific disciplines and expertise, use of mixed-methods, assessment of storylines against a wider set of quality criteria, and targeted stakeholder participation in key stages of the process.
Climate services are high in the international agenda for their potential to help combat the effects of climate change. However, climate science is rarely directly incorporated in the decision-making processes of societal actors, due to what has been identified as the usability gap. The cause behind this gap is partially due to a failure to timely and meaningfully engage users in the production of climate services, as well as misperceptions on which users can best benefit from climate service uptake. In this article we propose user selection and engagement guidelines that integrate important values from participatory science such as those of legitimacy, representativity and agency. The guidelines consist of 5 + 1 steps: defining the why, where, whom, which attributes, which intensity, and how to select and engage with stakeholders. Whilst these steps may be initially implemented by an ideally interdisciplinary team of scientists and service designers, the final step consists of an iterative process by which each decision is agreed together with the identified users and stakeholders under a co-production approach. We believe this systematic user selection and engagement practice is key to support the design of climate services aligned to the actual needs of a wide and inclusive range of empowered societal agents.
<p>Scenario-based approaches, including the concept of storylines, were introduced in climate science to provide unity of discourse, integrate the physical and socioeconomic components of phenomena, and make climate evolution more tangible. The use of storylines by multiple scholar communities and the novelty of some of its applications renders the concept ambiguous nonetheless, because the term hides behind a wide range of understandings and methodologies that often collide ontologically and epistemically. This semi-systematic literature review identifies three approaches that use storylines as a keystone concept: scenarios &#8211;familiar for their use in IPCC reports, discourse-analytical approaches, and physical climate storylines. After screening all peer-reviewed articles that mention climate and storylines, we selected 270 articles, with 158, 55, and 57 in each category. Results indicate that each community works with different methods and understandings. Moreover, these approaches have received criticism in their assembly of storylines: either for lacking explicitness or for the homogeneity of expertise involved. We propose that cross-pollination amongst the approaches could improve the goal to support climate action. Good practices are the involvement of a broader range of disciplines, use of mixed-methods, storyline assessment against a wider set of quality criteria, and stakeholder participation in key stages of the process.</p>
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