A need for "actionable" climate science and information: Summary of WCRP open science conference

The World Meteorological Organization's (WMO) creation of a global framework for climate services (GFCS) (WMO 2011) demonstrated that the complexity of the information requested for a diverse set of economic sectors and geographic regions around the world was increasing. A better understanding of the behavior of Earth's climate and its interactions with other Earth system components was critical to predict its future evolution, reduce vulnerability to high impact weather and climate events, and sustain life. Progress on the scientific understanding required to skillfully predict future states of the climate system would require an increasingly holistic approach across scientific disciplines. The World Climate Research Program (WCRP) convened its entire research community in a major open science conference (OSC) to advance such challenges.