Climate information websites: an evolving landscape

The climate change agenda is populated by actors and agencies with different
objectives, values, and motivations, yet many seek decision scale climate infor-
mation to inform policy and adaptation responses. A central element of this net-
work of activity is the climate information website (CIW) that has seen a rapid
and organic growth, yet with variable content and quality, and unfettered by any
code of practice. This builds an ethical–epistemic dilemma that warrants assess-
ment as the presence of CIWs contribute to real-world consequences and com-
mitment. This study considers the context of CIW growth, and reviews a
representative sample of CIWs to draw out key issues for consideration in CIW
development. We assess content, function, and use-case value through a dual
approach of a typology and user experience narratives to evaluate the general
efficacy of a CIW. The typology reveals strong contrasts in content, complicated
interfaces, and an overload of choice making it difficult to converge on a stable
outcome. The narratives capture user experience and highlight barriers that
include navigation difficulties, jargon laden content, minimal or opaque guid-
ance, and inferred information without context about uncertainty and limits to
skill. This illuminates four concerns: (1) the ethics of information provision in a
context of real-world consequences; (2) interfaces that present barriers to achiev-
ing robust solutions; (3) weak capacity of both users and providers to identify
information of value from the multimodel and multimethod data; and (4) inclu-
sion of data that infer skill. Nonetheless, results provide a positive indication of a
community of practice that is still maturing.