Greetings from COP27!

Figure 1: COP27 event was organized in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt 6.-18.11.2022. 

Figure 2: Mira Hulkkonen and Marianne Santala at COP27 venue. 

 

A few weeks ago the 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27) concluded with hopefully good results in the form of adaptation finance for the countries that are the most vulnerable to climate change induced damages. However, the other negotiation results were rather lame:  The goal of limiting global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees remains the same, but there are remarkable action and emission gaps which are showing that governments are not doing or even planning to do enough to reduce emissions.  While the intergovernmental negotiations give little hope for tackling climate change, the side-events at COP27 demonstrated high motivation and concrete actions taken around the world. The hope evidently lies with people, cities, researchers, NGO’s and businesses that really transform and can drive the societal change.  

Figures 3-4: Side-events at COP27 demonstrating high motivation and concrete actions taken around the world. 

 

Atmosphere and Climate Competence Center (ACCC) organized a side-event at Cryosphere Pavilion of the green zone at COP27 with the title “Data as a basis for policy,   innovation and education”. The event included keynote speeches, a panel discussion, an interactive workshop and general discussion with the audience.  

Mira Hulkkonen from Finnish Meteorological Institute opened the event with a presentation about the need to bring climate data closer to decision-makers and people. She showed two concrete examples of how the psychological distance and action gap can be made smaller by the means of smartly designed modelling. Concrete examples of climate data in action continued in the presentations of Scott Mackaro who told about Vaisala’s innovation called X-weather, Marta Gutierréz from EGI Foundation who explained about building the European Green Deal Data Space, and Andrew Pershing who introduced Climate Central’s Climate Shift Index. Marianne Santala from University of Helsinki INAR concluded the presentations by telling about the usage of climate data as a basis of education,and showcasing the versatile palette of climate education made available in Finland under the Climate University. 

The presentations were followed by a panel discussion, where the panelists Mira, Marta, Scott, Andrew and Marianne discussed about what is still needed for the bridges between climate data providers and relevant end users to be complete. The discussion helped the audience to orientate towards the interactive part, where they had a low-threshold chance to provide their views about the challenges perceived in the usage of climate data in their respective sectors.  

 

Figure 5:  Results of a questionnaire in the workshop. 

We got 84 responses to different statements, and voting was enabled by the Mentimeter tool. Both the panelists and the audience were rather unanimous: The willingness to consider climate change and to use climate data in different sectors is evidently high, but tools to get the relevant information in an applicable form are lacking. The interaction with individual audience members confirmed that there are still issues regarding the accessibility of climate change information. You can watch the recorded event here. 

 

Figure 6: ACCC side-event panelists. From left: Scott Mackaro, Marianne Santala, Andrew Pershing, Mira Hulkkonen and Marta Gutierréz. On the right: Mentimeter voting results about the challenges perceived in the usage of climate data. 

So there is a need for education on using climate data, and hopefully the new ClimComp course “Living with changing climate” will serve towards bridging the gap between data end-users and providers.  Stay tuned for this new course pilot in spring 2023! 

Figure 7:  New Climate University course is produced in the ClimComp project on the usage of open climate data in decicion making. 

Text: Marianne Santala and Mira Hulkkonen

The end of October full of Climate Action

October 23rd 2021 – Youth Climate and Nature Summit
(Nuorten ilmasto- ja luontohuippukokous)

Previous Saturday, 23rd of October 2021, had quite a lot going on in Helsinki, Finland. Young people around the country gathered in Helsinki Messukeskus to participate in an event called Youth Climate and Nature Summit. Young active Finns organized an event, which was targeted to the curious young people between ages of 15 to 29 interested in climate and nature action. The event started at 9.30 in the morning and had a full day scheduled with panel discussions, experts’ lecture sessions and workshops dealing with various topics related to climate change.

On behalf of ClimComp and Climate University me, Janina, and my colleague Joula arrived to the event. We put up a stand just outside the main stage. During the day, we discussed with the participants, asked them to answer a voluntary survey about climate competencies and shared Climate University course stickers and cards. The colorful stickers (and bowl full of candy) really woke up the interest in the participants.

In addition to the stand, we also organized a workshop together with experts from the Finnish Meteorological Institute. The topic of our workshop was What is climate data and How to use it to make an impact. Risto Makkonen introduced the climate data and climate modelling and then the participants got to familiarize themselves with the new IPCC Interactive Atlas. Participants worked in small groups focusing on the future scenarios in chosen location. In the end, the task was to summarize the findings into twitter-type text targeted to the wide audience, a decision makers or to other countries. Two examples are presented here:

 

“Ilmastonmuutoksen haasteet näkyvät jo nyt ihmisten elämän ja elinkeinojen vaikeutena. Esimerkiksi Andien sulaneet vuoristojäätiköt aiheuttavat vesipulaa alueen maanviljelijöille jo nyt! Tulevaisuudesta ei vielä edes tiedetä kun vaikutukset ovat monimutkaisia ja arvaamattomia!”

”Haluatko, että lapsesi tulevat näkemään vielä lunta? Mitä enemmän vähennämme päästöjä, sitä suuremmalla todennäköisyydellä saamme kokea lumen vielä täällä Etelä-Suomessakin.
#arktinenalue #grönlantisulaa”

 

Overall, the day was great and inspiring for us and surely for the participants. The whole event was well-organized and carefully executed. Thank you for the organizers for letting us take part in this lovely event and special thank you for all the active participants!

 

 

October 27th 2021 – ILPO Workshop day in Kumpula for lower secondary students

ILPO – ilmastonmuutoksen perusopetus – week is on for some lower secondary students in Helsinki. This means that students are excursing in various places and listening, seeing, learning and experimenting in climate related workshops. Students from Ruusuvuori lower secondary school arrived to Helsinki Kumpula Campus as part of their ILPO-week. Me and Joula were there to take care of them.

In the first half of the day we talked about weather and climate; what is weather and how can one read weather maps, how does weather differ from climate and how is the climate changing. Interactive tasks and discussions kept the participants awake until it was time to visit the roof of Kumpula (6th floor) to see the weather measurement set up above the city. That surely was exciting and memorable for the young students.

The second half of the day was spent with the topic of urban meteorology. This was an entirely new term for the young students. To connect urban meteorology with the climate change we played an online game called Climate Adaptation Game, where the students played as decision makers in a small town. In time, the climatic circumstances are changing and tough decisions need to be made in order to keep the city alive and citizens happy. Students realized how hard it is to consider everything and how proper actions for the future are needed.

 

We had again such fun time with the young students again, and we hope they had a fruitful and engaging day themselves.

 

Happy November everyone!

Janina & Joula

Welcome to follow ClimComp!

Welcome to follow and join our path in exploring what are the necessary competencies in climate change mitigation and adaptation we in the society necessarily and urgently need, and how these competencies are learned in the education system.

In this blog, we will write about our main findings on the way. Meanwhile, please take a look on the research aims, get to know the research team and get in contact if you have ideas related to the topic.