Introduction to Climate Services

Transcription

1 Introduction to Climate Services Chris Hewitt, Head of Climate Service, Met Office, UK 23 July 2015

2 Contents Introduction and motivation Why do we need climate services? What are climate services? Some developments: Global Regional e.g. Europe and E Asia National e.g. Tanzania and UK What are the opportunities and challenges?

3 Circle of Securities: The Scale of the Challenge Sir John Beddington The Perfect Storm Water Can 9 billion people be fed equitably, healthily and sustainably? Migration Economic Can we cope with the future demands on water? Climate Variability and Change Can we provide enough energy to supply the growing population coming out of poverty? Health Urbanisation Population growth Limited Natural Resources Food Can we do all this whilst mitigating and adapting to climate change? Political Energy Crown copyright Met Office

4 Decides to establish a Global Framework for Climate Services to strengthen production, availability, delivery and application of science-based climate prediction and services;

5 Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS) Enable society to manage better the risks and opportunities arising from climate variability and change Using science-based climate information Prioritise vulnerable developing countries and capacity development Strengthen not duplicate Priority areas: Agriculture and food security Water management Health Disaster risk reduction Energy Urban environments

6 What is a climate service? The provision of climate information to assist decision-making Must respond to user needs Needs to be based on scientifically credible information and expertise Requires appropriate engagement between the users and providers Needs an effective access mechanism Users could include policy makers, decision makers, governments, public sector, private sector, boundary organisations, general public, academia

7 Timescales in scope? Past climate Near-term future climate Long-term future climate Often an overlap with weather services

8 Climate Services: application and translation of climate science Over the past 25 years we have seen a shift from: mitigation to mitigation and adaptation few to many customers/users/stakeholders global century scenarios to regional predictions for months to decades climate change to climate change and climate variability broad climate to characteristics of weather including extremes and impacts research to Operational delivery regularly updated Crown copyright Met Office

9 From: Andrea Tilche, European Commission European climate services landscape FP7 and

10 Aim: improve the usefulness of seasonal-decadal predictions Approach: start from user needs, rather than capability, to identify science and tools/services needed by decision-makers Objectives: Assess user needs and knowledge gaps Develop a set of tools and techniques tailored to user needs for calibrating, downscaling and modelling impacts Produce a set of co-designed climate service prototypes addressing user needs RMP UIP Energy management, transport, water resource management, agriculture/land management, food security Consortium: 24 partners plus >70 user organisations

11 UIP Climate Science for Services Partnership - China CSIS O&M RMP CD Three sectors most likely to benefit from climate services in China: Energy especially hydroelectric on Yangtze River Flood management especially coastal and urban Agriculture especially drought and flooding Now working on energy, food security, urban environments, in terms of sector-relevant metrics and indicators, drivers of predictability and relationship with the metrics, and translational science

12 Tanzania Situation: Met Office and TMA work together on a Climate Services Development Project, requested by TMA and funded by DFID Approach: Prioritization of user requirements: in accordance with the recommendations of the WMO Global Framework for Climate Services. Data Rescue and Digitisation: to embed a sustainable, tried and tested, fully documented, business process for the Quality Controlled digitisation of paper-based historical weather observations. Outputs: aligned with GFCS 1) Climate vulnerable socio-economic sectors identified and user requirements determined for higher priority sectors 2) A digital database of historical meteorological data for the creation of a temporal and spatial climatology for Tanzania 3) Climate information and services provided by TMA for the renewable wind energy, disaster risk reduction and agriculture sectors. (Output 3 pending finance) UIP O&M RMP CSIS

13 UIP CSIS UK Climate Information O&M RMP UKCP02: First bespoke climate projections for UK HadCM3, and regional modelling at 50km resolution Three future periods, 4 emission pathways No quantification of uncertainties UKCP09: probabilistic projections Moving from uncertainty to probability Perturbed parameter ensemble (PPE) Regional downscaling at 25km resolution Changes to 30 year means UKCPnext

14 User requests for UKCPnext Retain robust assessment of uncertainties Retain consistency of information (e.g. across time scales) More information for next few decades More information on extremes Provide a simpler and more flexible basis for decisionmaking: an ensemble of realisations of future variability and change with full spatial and temporal coherence Keep up to date e.g. align with IPCC

15 Extreme Climate Events European summer 2003 The climate context Conventional message: Climate change will bring more hot dry summers to Europe 2004 assessment: Odds of 2003 temperatures doubled in greenhouse world Heatwaves that would be expected to occur twice a century in early 2000s now expected twice a decade

16 Summary Why do we need climate services? Some developments globally, regionally and nationally Finally: Opportunities: GFCS vision: enable society to manage better the risks and opportunities arising from climate variability and change...using climate information BUT mash up with other information Some challenges: Effective engagement between users and providers and developers Delivering services of value/use, including developing useful capability Access to services, worldwide

17 Questions and discussion

18 Changing extremes By 2100: Very hot summers increase 20-fold Very wet winters increase six-fold But: 35% chance of wet summer until 2040s 20-30% chance of cold winters until 2020s Sexton & Harris (2013)

19 Extremes: high impact weather DJF Observed heavy rain (Radar) JJA Observed heavy rain (Radar) 12km future change ( present day) DJF 1.5km future change ( present day) DJF Adaptation agenda: Flooding Urban drainage Soil erosion 12km future change ( present day) JJA 1.5km future change ( present day) JJA Kendon et al., 2014: Nature Climate Change