Program day 1

Convenors: Jan Polcher - Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique (LMD-IPSL), France; Moussa Diakhaté - Université Amadou Mahtar Mbow (UAM), Senegal; Marie-Amelie Boucher - Université de Sherbrooke, Canada; Dewi Kirono - CSIRO, Australia

Session description : The water cycle is under the combined influence of anthropogenic climate change and human water management aimed at optimising our resources. This session aims to explore recent progress in our understanding of these two drivers, their interactions and how they will impact water availability in the coming decades or how they have shaped the evolution of water resources in the past. The session should also cover efforts to quantify the water cycle as this is the basis for detecting and estimating the magnitude of human impacts. Abstracts covering these topics in the various components of the Earth system are solicited. The session aims to be multi-disciplinary and welcomes contributions from the various scientific disciplines dealing with the hydrological cycle.

Keynote speakers:

• "Water remains a blind spot in climate change policies" - Hervé Douville - Météo France, France - Remotely
• "Two decades of global water cycle variability – non-stationarity assessed by land remote sensing synthesis", Sujay Kumar - NASA, USA

Convenors: Mat Collins - University of Exeter, UK; Lisa Alexander - University of New South Wales (UNSW), Australia; Nicola Maher - University of Colorado, USA

Session description: Focus on advances in understanding the characteristics and processes responsible for natural climate variability on intra-seasonal, seasonal-to-annual, annual-to-decadal, decadal to centennial, and centennial to millennial timescales.

Keynote speakers:

• "Exploiting large ensembles to understand the combined influence of ENSO and other climate drivers on the Southern Hemisphere extratropical circulation", Marisol Osman - Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany / Centro de Investigaciones del Mar y la Atmósfera (CIMA), Argentina
• "Tropical to extratropical interactions", Julie Arblaster - Monash University, Australia
• "Using past climate information and simulations can help projecting future climates", Masa Kageyama - Laboratoire des sciences du climat et l'environnement (IPSL-LSCE), France

Convenors: Elisabeth Thompson - Met Office, UK; Alexander Ruane NASA, USA

Session description : Developing unambiguous and communicable climate information for decision-making. Designing services informed by stakeholder context. Climate information (past, present and future) on derivative variables (thresholds, extremes, compound climate responses, regional tipping points, etc.). How to characterize what is plausible, defensible and actionable information for climate services. Communicating meta-data and transparent methodologies for more robust climate application.

Keynote speakers:

• "On the operationalisation of climate services" - Carlo Buontempo - ECMWF, Germany
• "Climate information for climate action: the important role of scientific research", Lisa Alexander - UNSW Sydney, Australia
• "Climate change information for climate services to support adaptation in Africa", Mouhamadou Bamba Sylla - AIMS Africa, Rwanda

Convenors: Izidine Pinto - University of Cape Town, South Africa; Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick - University of New South Wales (UNSW), Australia; Joyce Kimutai - Kenya Meteorological Department, Kenya

Session description : Contributions that attribute climate change and weather and climate extremes to external factors on regional and/or global scales; attribution of impacts to climate change. Developing and evaluating methodology for climate change attribution and extreme events attribution; communication and application of attribution studies for societal benefit.

Keynote speakers:

• "Attribution of Socio-economic Impacts of Extreme Events: Challenges and Opportunities" - Mark New - African Climate and Development Initiative, University of Cape Town, South Africa
• "Challenges and opportunities in rapid event attribution", Friederike Otto - Imperial College London, UK Remotely

Convenors: Judith Mulwa - GSMA, Kenya; Christopher Hewitt - World Meteorological Organization (WMO), Switzerland; Carlo Buontempo - ECMWF, UK

Session description : The global (framework for) climate services at regional and local scales. Roles of National Meteorological Services, commercial, academic and institutional climate services. Dynamics of global-north-south relationships in climate services. Open-source climate science / Open Access publications. Tools and resources (including IPCC AR6 Regional Atlas), and transparency on strengths, weaknesses, and limitations. Improving communication and diffusion of information. Sustainability of capacity.

Convenors: Kristie Ebi - University of Washington, USA; Sari Kovats - London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, UK; Negin Nazarian - University of New South Wales (UNSW), Australia

Session description : Quantifying the impact of global climate change on human health, developing methods for climate change risk assessment for population health, and modelling urban trends, demographic change, urban climates on health, wellbeing and productivity.

Keynote speakers:

• "Health risks of climate change in the WHO AFRO region - what are our research priorities?" - Brama Kone - Swiss Centre for Scientific Research, Côte d'Ivoire - Remotely
• "Coordinated research on extreme precipitation in multiple urban systems", Fei Chen - NASA, USA

Convenors: Sonia Seneviratne - ETH Zurich, Switzerland; Graeme Stephens - JPL Science - NASA, USA; Benoit Meyssignac - LEGOS, Université de Toulouse, France

Session description : Advances in understanding on changes in the global energy budget in the coupled ocean-atmosphere-land-cryosphere systems.

Keynote speakers:

• "Effective radiative forcing on climate, building from the IPCC AR6 Assessment" - Piers Forster - University of Leeds, UK
• "On the future of Earth radiation and energy imbalance measurements", Maria Z. Hakuba - NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, USA - Remotely

Convenors: Noël Sébastien Keenlyside - Bergen University, Norway; Willem Landman - University of Pretoria, South Africa; Marisol Osman - Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) Germany / Centro de Investigaciones del Mar y la Atmósfera (CIMA), Argentina; June-Yi Lee - Pusan National University, South Korea

Session description: Showcasing progress and challenges in understanding the predictability of Earth’s climate at time horizons from weeks to decades, and advances in the development of climate prediction systems including novel approaches such as those using AI/ML.

Keynote speaker:

• "S2S research, applications and future challenges: An Australian perspective" - Debra Hudson - Bureau of Meteorology, Australia - Remotely
• "Seasonal to decadal prediction: some challenges and opportunities" - Doug Smith - Metoffice, UK

Convenors: Amadou T. Gaye - Université Cheikh Anta Diop, Senegal; Kamoru Abiodun Lawal - Nigerian Meteorological Agency, Niger; Rupert Stuart-Smith - University of Oxford, UK

Session description : Attribution of multi-annual to decadal changes in climate system. Attribution of regional extremes. Institutional capacity / access to attribution. Linking attribution information and the decision maker. Attribution of climate impact drivers.

Keynote speakers:

• "Attribution of weather and climate extremes and climate change impacts: A regional perspective", Sihan Li - University of Sheffield, UK - Remotely
• "A zonal contrast in future changes in Sahel precipitation", Paul-Arthur Monerie - University of Reading, UK
• "Informing climate risk using the historical record and regional attribution results", Gabi Hegerl - University of Edinburgh, UK

Convenors: Andrew Robertson - International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI), USA; Anna Steynor - Met Office, UK; Geneva List - International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI), USA

Session description : Metrics of information robustness, and of appropriate communication and adoption. Assessing the relationship between information uncertainty and decision consequence. Ethics and values, accountability, misunderstanding and contradiction between services, and avoiding maladaptation. Defining and assessing added value in decision contexts. Context specific barriers to information access use and understanding. Global north-south interactions in provider-client dynamics. Socio-economic benefits of climate services. Prioritizing investments in climate services.

Keynote speakers:

• "Whose values count? The power of principled metrics in shaping investments in climate resilience" - Emma Visman - Save the Children International, UK
• "A Mixed-methods approaches for evaluating the effectiveness of weather and climate information." - Brian Chiputwa - CIFOR-ICRAF, Kenya