The Leeds Africa Climate Hackathon - experiences of running a hackathon and highlights of results
The Leeds Africa Climate Hackathon - experiences of running a hackathon and highlights of results
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DOI：
10.1002/wea.4246
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发表时间：
2022-06-24
期刊：
影响因子：
1.9
通讯作者：
Ochieng, Willis
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Crook, Julia;Marsham, John H.;Ochieng, Willis
2021年11月，第26届联合国气候变化缔约方大会（COP 26）会议在英国格拉斯哥举行。这是一次关于各国坚持《巴黎协定》的重要会议，由于全年媒体都在报道气候和生态紧急情况，英国气象局和气象局学术合作伙伴关系（MOAP）内的几所英国大学举办了“黑客马拉松”，以产生与用户相关的新气候变化信息，并在COP 26（气象局，2021 a）上展示。黑客松是来自不同背景的人们聚集在一起，在相对较短的时间内创造性地解决问题，传统上专注于动手编码（“黑客”），但有时越来越多地专注于更广泛的问题解决和/或头脑风暴。2021年5月下旬，利兹大学举办了利兹非洲气候黑客活动，旨在通过将未来可能的天气事件与过去的事件联系起来，以令人信服的方式对东非和西非未来可能的气候进行用户相关的叙述。这就是本文的主题。由于COVID-19的情况，黑客挑战赛是使用Microsoft Teams、Zoom和其他在线平台作为在线虚拟活动举行的。未来气候变化信息通常以未来气候减去当前气候的形式提出，通常是平均温度和降雨量，或对不同部门的平均影响，而且往往是大区域的平均值。然而，正是当地经历的具有日常变化的实际天气造成了影响。当人们用他们经历过的过去的天气/影响来表达时，他们倾向于更好地理解和参与未来的天气/影响（例如非洲气候，菲茨帕特里克等人，2020;英国气候，气象局，2021 b）。对世界许多地区，特别是撒哈拉以南非洲大部分地区，区域和地方一级未来降水量变化的估计非常不确定，尽管有时可以从研究中排除显示不切实际的变化机制的气候模型，（例如Rowell，2019年），不可能给出有用的降水变化概率预测，预测的不确定性会给气候用户造成混乱更改信息。Climate narratives（Dessai et al.，2018; Jack等人，2020年）是针对决策者的区域气候未来可能演变的定性物理描述。它们侧重于气候变化的影响，通常与气候科学家和决策者共同制作，比概率预测更容易为非气候专家所用。重要的是，每一个叙事都是以确定性的方式写成的，而不同叙事之间的差异表达了（如果不是完全代表）不确定性的信封。关于东非气候叙述的实例，可参见Burgin et al.（2019 a，B），已用于为决策提供信息的过程（Evans等人，2020年）。
In November 2021, the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) meeting was held in Glasgow, UK. This was a critical meeting regarding countries sticking to the Paris Agreement and, with much in the media throughout the year about the climate and ecological emergencies, the UK Met Office and several UK Universities within the Met Office Academic Partnership (MOAP) ran ‘hackathons’ to produce novel user-relevant climate change information, showcased at COP26 (Met Office, 2021a).‘Hackathons’ are where people from different backgrounds come together for a relatively short time to creatively solve problems, traditionally with a focus on hand-on coding (‘hacking’), but increasingly sometimes focused instead on wider problem solving and/or brainstorming. In late May 2021, the University of Leeds held the Leeds Africa Climate Hackathon aiming to generate user-relevant narratives of possible future climate in East and West Africa, presented in a compelling way by relating possible future weather events to past events. This hackathon is the subject of this paper. Due to the COVID-19 situation, the hackathon was held as an online virtual event using Microsoft Teams, Zoom and other online platforms. Future climate change information is often presented as future minus current climate, typically in terms of mean temperature and rainfall, or average impacts on different sectors, and often averaged over large regions. Yet it is the actual weather with day-to-day variability that is experienced locally that creates impacts. People tend to better understand and engage with future weather/impacts when expressed in terms of past weather/impacts they have experienced (eg for African climate, Fitzpatrick et al., 2020; for UK climate, Met Office, 2021b). Estimates of future precipitation change at the regional and local level are deeply uncertain for many parts of the world, especially for much of sub-Saharan Africa, and although climate models that demonstrate unrealistic mechanisms of change can sometimes be eliminated from studies (eg Rowell, 2019), it is not possible to give useful probabilistic projections of precipitation change and the uncertainty in projections can cause confusion for users of climate change information. Climate narratives (Dessai et al., 2018; Jack et al., 2020) are qualitative physical descriptions of plausible future evolutions of regional climate aimed at decision makers. They focus on the impacts of climate change, are often co-produced with climate scientists and decision makers, and are more accessible to non-climate specialists than probabilistic projections. Importantly, each narrative is written in terms of certainty, whereas the differences between different narratives expresses (if not completely represents) the envelope of uncertainty. Examples of the production of climate narratives for East Africa can be found in Burgin et al.(2019a, b), which have been used in processes to inform decision making (Evans et al., 2020).