Communication and dissemination of forecasts and engaging user communities

The value of weather and climate information, at any timescale, is a function of the availability, comprehensibility, and usability of the information so that decisions and actions can be taken in response to uncertain future events. The uncertainties and variable skill of seasonal-to-seasonal (S2S) forecasts have the potential to make communication and dissemination of these forecasts more challenging, however, particularly where decisions are critical to life and well-being or have significant economic impact to the user. Engagement with user communities is therefore essential to ensure these forecasts provide their anticipated value and to prevent misconceptions or disparities between user expectations and the available science. This chapter describes recent activities such as the S2S real-time pilot and the progress in the S2S application literature for a range of sectors (agriculture, energy and water, disaster risk management, and health) and the readily available public products and services. Gaps and trends in current S2S application research are identified, and descriptions of best practice examples are synthesized to provide a set of guiding principles for S2S forecast communication, dissemination, and user engagement.