Recommendations for producing knowledge syntheses to inform climate change assessments

Abstract

Climate change assessments (CCAs) play a critical role in taking stock of the available science and other forms of knowledge and informing policy processes. As the underlying evidence base increases exponentially, the complexity also increases and challenges CCA author teams to capture all the relevant knowledge. Therefore, CCAs will need to transition from predominantly assessing primary research to focusing on the assessment and critical appraisal of knowledge syntheses of such work, alongside capturing knowledges held outside traditional scientific sources. To support this, a stronger knowledge synthesis culture is needed, and we propose key recommendations and offer guidance for producing robust, transparent, reproducible, inclusive and timely syntheses that can inform CCAs across scales.