Adapting climate science: Global customisations, national uses, and local appropriations

Abstract

Much scholarship has argued that information on future climate change ought to be the basis for climate adaptation decisions. But how has the impressive corpus of knowledge produced by climate scientists been processed and adapted to inform adaptation decisions in practice? This doctoral thesis compares and analyses how different actors have ap-proached, grappled with, understood, generated relevance and acted upon climate science for adaptation. Drawing on surveys, semi-structured interviews, documentary materials, workshop observations, and the peer-reviewed literature, this thesis encompasses three empirical studies – on global customisations, national uses and local appropriations – as well as a reflective review ordering different social-scientific perspectives according to their underlying aims and concerns. Starting with a historiographic perspective on the origin of the concept of ‘climate’, the introduction (chapter 1) illustrates what climate science at the turn of the 21st century is, before reviewing key social-scientific scholarship on climate adaptation and climate sci-ence. Chapter 2 then describes not only the particular data and methods employed in this thesis, but also reflects how methodological considerations influence the research project more generally. Chapter 3 analyses how countries around the globe differ in their ability to customise climate models into climate projections supporting their national adaptation planning. While a surprising amount of nations have produced such information, the degree to which they are able to tailor the information to their needs and political cultures is strongly correlated with the countries’ general competence to publish climate science. Thus, while climate information is widely available, customising it for own purposes remains restricted to a few countries. Chapter 4 introduces the typology of sailors, divers, and observers to emphasise three particu-lar ways climate projections have been used on a national level. It argues that the more qualitative or quantitative use of climate information is neither correlated to climate service users’ affiliation to a sector, academia, or practice. Further, I find that many adaptation actors used information on climate futures in a qualitative way, but number-crunched cur-rent climate data. Communicating climate information, both qualitatively as well as quanti-tatively, is thus key to increase the national use of climate science. Chapter 5 analyses how, and more importantly why, four sectors vulnerable to heatwaves appropriated scientific climate knowledge differently. By drawing on the work of Eviatar Zerubavel and his cultural cognitive sociology, I find that the formative and performative dimen-sions of knowledge play a major role in appropriating climate information. One, whether concepts are shared between a sector and climate science, allowing to similarly recognise the relevance of climate knowledge. Two, the more experts enjoy a large decision scope, the more they seem to be able to integrate heatwaves into their work. The decision scope is, however, influenced by the properties with which experts work: inert matter allows a different style of adaptation than people. Chapter 6 is a reflective review paper that classifies the vast amount of research into five distinct ways social scientists study climate science and climate adaptation. The aim of this review is to draw out distinct underlying ontological and epistemological differences, which are in themselves influenced by partly competing priorities, concerns and aims. By introducing how social scientists committed to a descriptivist style are different to the amelio-rist, argumentivist, interpretivist and critical order of social science, I aim to emphasise how social science on adapting climate science is a rich but also potentially tribal field. Chapter 7 then discusses the three empirical papers and the review further, and details how the collected material on local appropriations could contribute to ongoing academic dis-cussions. It also expands on how the Youth Strike for Climate influences discussions on climate adaptation (not mitigation), and how the entry of a new societal actor offers promising new research opportunities for the study of ‘adapting climate science’.