Climate Change Knowledge Portal

Transcription

1 Climate Change Knowledge Portal Why a Climate Change Knowledge Portal? Using climate science research results to inform the decision process about which policies or specific measures are needed to tackle climate impacts is often a difficult, yet crucial undertaking. The successful integration of scientific information in decision making often depends on the use of flexible frameworks and tools that can provide comprehensible information to a wide range of users, allowing them to evaluate how to apply it to the design of a project or policy. In an effort to serve as a one stop shop for climate-related data and tools, the World Bank has created the Climate Change Knowledge Portal, an online tool that provides access to comprehensive global and country data information related to climate change and development.

2 What does it entail? The portal provides a web-based platform to assist in capacity building and knowledge development. The aim of the portal is to help project teams to plan, monitor and evaluate project responses with respect to climate change risks, to assess potential adaptation needs, to learn of mitigation opportunities related to low carbon growth, as well as other available resources. Three specific goals are envisioned, meeting the needs of development practitioners: Improve evaluation - Assess the relative overall level of country and regional vulnerability to climate-change hazards; paying particular attention to the credibility, consistency, validity and usefulness of local, national, regional and international sources of information. Adjust overall implementation strategy - Synthesize national priority documents including National Communication to the UNFCCC, NAPAs, Poverty Reduction Papers, NAMA s, etc in order to extract most useful information to support decision making processes. Design appropriate monitoring targets - Identify entry points for adaptation and mitigation actions within existent and proposed projects. An overview of the key questions to be addressed, along with expected outcomes are noted in the table below. Objective Key Questions Addressed Expected Outcomes Improve evaluation Adjust overall implementation strategy Design appropriate monitoring targets Is climate change a relevant consideration for this project? How sensitive are current activities to overall projected changes? Is there a foreseeable problem that may be caused or exacerbated by climate change? What are the most significant (urgent) changes projected? What are the climate and climate change risks affecting the proposed activities? Is the project location sensitive to the effects of climate change? How will change in a climate variable affect the project responses? How will specific adaptation and mitigation strategies reduce contribution and sensitivity to climate change? What can be achieved with low carbon growth initiatives? Targeted definition of areas where additional investment/assessments are required in order to manage relevant climate risks Identification of climate-risk hot spots Evaluate the expected future trends in likelihood, extent (identifying additional areas at risk due to climate change), and magnitude (additional impacts due to climate change under specified scenarios) of key climate variables Examine the robustness of specific adaptation and mitigation strategies against a range of climate futures, particularly those related to doubling CO 2 concentrations Devise adjustments that improve a project s impact? Make decisions that are robust against an uncertain future Define critical thresholds to monitor under project activities.

3 How to navigate through it? The Climate Change Data Portal consists of a spatially referenced data visualized on a Google map/gis interface. Users are able to evaluate climate related vulnerabilities, risks, and actions from a query on a particular location on the globe by interpreting climate and climate related data at different levels of details. By using the Climate Change Portal you will: 1) LEARN about climate information Start by selecting a location of interest within the map to get climate and climate related information that pertains specifically to your site or region. A set of tabs will show different queried data for the selected location, including direct access to climate information. This particular tab provides access to historical data, climate variability assessment at a country weather station and Global Circulation Model climate projections for the selected site --TIP: always make sure to click on the MORE or EXPLORE FURTHER links for full display of data-- Review the climate variables presented under different timeframes to identify major climate hazards within your country and where do they occur. The climate analysis data provide a first step to evaluate climate risks and impacts to assess local vulnerabilities in key sectors. Different levels of data analysis, will allow you to understanding current climate variability (using the Historical data tab and the IRI historical climate variability assessment tool) as well as projected changes projected under different Global Circulation Models (GCM). You can evaluate impacts on the agriculture, disaster risk, water, health, energy, and NRM sectors under the Impacts tab.

4 2) INCREASE Knowledge on climate change related actions Adaptation: Identify exposure to associated impacts on specific sectors by, for example, evaluating precipitation and runoff patterns on local hydropower potential, and/or evaluate population and GDP sensitivity to increase climate variability in the long, medium, and short term. Identify the ranges of potential changes, evaluate climate uncertainties and potential adaptation options, access to policy and tools documents to help overcome challenges, and identify priorities for action. Use the information to create vulnerability matrices at different levels (national, sectoral, etc). Climate information can be used within different vulnerability assessment tools such as HEAT (Hands-on Energy Adaptation toolkit) for the assessment of impacts and resilience of energy assets to climate changes. The information in the Portal allows you to link climate hazard information, climate impacts by sectors, exposure and vulnerability assessments, among other variables, that can be included in a Vulnerability Assessment Matrix. An example of such matrix is below. State Sector Hazards Impacts Vulnerability/ Exposure (High, Med, Low) Uzbekistan Energy Rising temperatures and increased risk of heat-waves Increased precipitation in winter (risk of floods). Decreased precipitation in summer (more frequent and longer droughts) Decrease in river runoff and reduction in water availability Increased risk of landslides in hilly areas Effects energy demand for space heating and space cooling Affects electricity production from water cooled thermal power plants (90% of domestic electricity produced) and hydropower plants (10% of electricity production) Affects railroads used to transport Uzbek oil refinery products, as well as gas pipelines and electricity transmission lines High Adaptation Options Renovation of the energy sector by replacing and upgrading the energy generation and transmission assets. Considering climate change when revising energy consumption rates. Improve energy efficiency in buildings. Diversify the energy system. Improve water resource management. Bolivia Agriculture Droughts (reduced annual precipitation and increased monthly temperature during early planting Loss of crop production, reduction in livestock. No replenishment of seeds. Threats to food security High Increased irrigation for staple food production. Promote water harvesting techniques

5 season) Water Floods (increased extreme precipitation events) Loss of arable land, loss of crop production. Reduction of sanitation and overall drinking water sources High Increase flood control practices. India Health Floods (increased extreme precipitation events, increased annual temperature) Increase of diarrheal and vector borne diseases such as dengue Medium Improved sanitary conditions in rural conditions. 3) MAP IT! The Climate Change Data Portal also includes a mapping visualization tool (webgis) that displays key climate variables and climate-related data. If you would like to visualize key variables, click on the GIS Maps from the left navigation menu. An example of some visualization layers include: Climate data from the high resolution GCM from the MRI Japanese Meteorological Service (displayed as a percent change from baseline to 2100) A sample of agriculture crop projections, World Bank climate change related projects in eight different categories. Projected water runoff at the watershed level for several climate scenarios.

6 A sample of World Bank low carbon growth studies in the energy sector (ESMAP) in several pilot countries as well as access to relevant related documents.

7 Additional resources The Climate Change data portal allows you to search a Knowledge Database for access to relevant publications on climate change and the WB Project Data Base to access WB project information within the country of interested. Links to these Databases and tools are located within the left navigation panel. 1. The portal provides you several links to additional resources aggregated at country level. This information can be downloaded trough the green Download Resources Tab. This section currently includes: A set of policy notes on Climate Change and Agriculture for 19 Latin America and the Caribbean countries developed by the LAC Region (this notes can be accessed by either the Agriculture tab or the Download Resources tab) or similar resources by the ECA region. Climate Change IPCC projected data disaggregated by country. Links to other initiatives and partners including the UNDP Adaptation Learning Mechanism (ALM) tool. 2. Finally, the Data Portal provides additional links to climate change tools that can provide enhanced information on adaptation and risk management tools. These tools are displayed in the partner s tools and other external databases of the left navigation panel. Further information on mitigation (emissions data), climate change impacts on additional sectors, and country adaptation profiles is forthcoming.