The use of weather, water, ice and climate (WWIC) in the Polar regions: Lessons learned about the decision-making needs of WWIC users

• Main Authors: Liggett, D, Heinrich, VJ, Stewart, Emma, Thoman, R
• Format: Other/Unknown Material
• Language: English
• Published: 2022
• Subjects: Antarctic; Arctic; Antarc*; Sea ice
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10182/14731

Research by the Polar Prediction Project's Societal and Economic Research and Applications Task Team's (PPP-SERA) aims to understand weather, water, ice and climate (WWIC) information use, related decision-making, and weather service provider and user (consumer) connections in polar environments. Detailed qualitative and quantitative data about operators’ activities and WWIC decision-making were collected during a series of PPP-SERA workshops, surveys and interviews (2015-2019) and were later thematically analysed. In this presentation, we will share some of the results from this work. Stakeholders in polar regions, including fishing and tourism operators, governments, scientists, and Arctic Indigenous communities, utilise WWIC information to plan tasks and support their operations on land, sea, ice, and in the air. A key finding was that a rigid dichotomy between users (consumers) and producers of WWIC information no longer exists. Furthermore, continued technological advancement has resulted in a diversity of environmental forecasting products requiring different skills to derive meaningful and task-oriented information, which in turn affects the perceived and actual risks associated with operational decision-making. Integrated Indigenous knowledge is critical in much of the Arctic, and local to regional scale experience is valued and is, in fact, vital in managing operations, WWIC-related decision-making, and safety in both polar regions. Despite advances in large scale numerical weather predictions and product development, barriers to accessing high-quality useable observations and forecasts still exist, though the dominant concerns differ between the Arctic and Antarctic. As a result, continued stakeholder engagement and research focussing on the utilisation of WWIC information, and decision-making processes, remain highly relevant to reduce further risks to human and environmental health and safety for Polar operators.