Scenario Planning Using Climate Data

The integration of climate data into scenario planning is an important next step in helping local planning practitioners more usefully engage with the public around questions of how to address local challenges of climate change mitigation and adaptation. Climate scientists have increasingly recognized the need for more user-friendly science products that can be used in the service of public policy and decision making, but there are nonetheless a handful of challenges that remain. Drawing on emergent concepts from climate as well as research in climate communication around the utility of narrative, we propose a narrative-based approach to communicating climate science that can function as a useful and effective input to scenarioplanning processes for urban and regional planning.