Suchergebnisse

Abstract
For climate services to be relevant and informative for users, scientific data definitions need to match users' perceptions or beliefs. This study proposes and tests novel yet simple methods to compare beliefs of timing of recurrent climatic events with empirical evidence from multiple historical time series. The methods are tested by applying them to the onset date of the monsoon in Bangladesh, where several scientific monsoon definitions can be applied, yielding different results for monsoon onset dates. It is a challenge to know which monsoon definition compares best with people's beliefs. Time series from eight different scientific monsoon definitions in six regions are compared with respondent beliefs from a previously completed survey concerning the monsoon onset.
Beliefs about the timing of the monsoon onset are represented probabilistically for each respondent by constructing a probability mass function (PMF) from elicited responses about the earliest, normal, and latest dates for the event. A three-parameter circular modified triangular distribution (CMTD) is used to allow for the possibility (albeit small) of the onset at any time of the year. These distributions are then compared to the historical time series using two approaches: likelihood scores, and the mean and standard deviation of time series of dates simulated from each belief distribution.
The methods proposed give the basis for further iterative discussion with decision-makers in the development of eventual climate services. This study uses Jessore, Bangladesh, as an example and finds that a rainfall definition, applying a 10 mm day−1 threshold to NCEP–NCAR reanalysis (Reanalyis-1) data, best matches the survey respondents' beliefs about monsoon onset.

Abstract
Climate change adaptation has increasingly come to be conceptualized as a place-based social process, in large part mediated by the local cultural context. The specificity of adaptation has called for partnerships between scientific and local communities to "co-produce" knowledge of climate variability (weather) and longer-term climate change. However, this raises numerous methodological challenges, including how to elicit the representations, knowledge, and cultural meanings of weather that are tacit to people in a community, and represent them in an explicit form that can be shared in a process of "co-production". Such work demands careful attention to the way tightly intertwined knowledge systems continuously rebuild representations of climate in a place, and how these knowledge systems are also intertwined with values and the exercise of power. This paper takes up this challenge and explores the potential offered by theories and methods of narrative. Looking at a research project "co-producing" knowledge of weather and impacts in northeast Bangladesh, this paper describes the experience of running narrative interviews with communities there, and how these narratives were analyzed along four themes to contribute to the co-production process. These themes included 1) the weather phenomena and impacts important to local communities, 2) how weather provides meaning and identity in that place, 3) how community actors produce and share weather knowledge, and 4) the climate-related narratives pervading the community. In sharing this experience, this paper seeks to fulfil a demand for more detailed practical accounts of narrative methods in climate adaptation research, particularly for knowledge co-production.