Recent decades have seen dramatic advances in our fundamental understanding of the climate system, with increasingly finer-scale projections and improved process representation. At the same time, work on the science of climate change impacts, mitigation, and adaptation has seen explosive growth, with a corresponding emphasis on interdisciplinary collaboration. This work is regularly synthesized in a series of reports coordinated by states, countries, and international bodies, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s assessment reports, the most recent of which extends to over 4000 pages and incorporates the contributions of thousands of scholars. Yet, despite this flood of information, decision-makers continue to struggle with how to use it for local planning planning, revealing persistent gaps between knowledge generation and application in this domain. In this talk, I describe a few examples of how direct engagement with stakeholders can lead to more actionable climate science and new opportunities for fundamental scientific insights.