Enhancing the use of sector-specific climate indices: Lessons from the Caribbean

Transcription

1 Enhancing the use of sector-specific climate indices: Lessons from the Caribbean ADRIAN TROTMAN, ROCHÉ MAHON AND CEDRIC VAN MEERBEECK CARIBBEAN INSTITUTE FOR METEOROLOGY AND HYDROLOGY ST. JAMES, BARBADOS Presented at: WMO Technical Conference on Climate Services for policy and decision support April 2018 Geneva, Switzerland

2 What was the Motivation for using Climate Indices? Developing globally standardized indices for assessing climate extremes What are the climate trends? How variable has been the climate from year to year? What are the projections related to these extremes? Welcomed information with advantage that regions and countries are working with the same indices good for comparisons of climate within and across regions However what about sector applications? What would be sector relevant? Stephenson et al 2014

3 Why Sector Specific Climate Indices? Expert Team on Sector-Specific Climate Indices (ET-SCI) Identify and evaluate additional sector-specific indices, both singleand multi-variable types to define both simple and complex climate risks of interest to user groups Developed software package called ClimPACT for this purpose Open source R software package Utilises more than 60 indices and indicators

4 Reaction from two workshops Caribbean, Pacific Islands 1 Sector specific indices and the ClimPACT have some potential great start! Many encouraged by the great effort being made to be sector targeted far more meaningful than just providing typical climate information Provides information which can give indication of the risk of variable and changing climate Some indices correlate well with sector outcomes Software good for quality control

5 Reaction from two workshops Caribbean, Pacific Islands 2 Need for rigorous data management and collection in sectors, including such that format can be compatible with those of climate Suggestion that anomalies would be valuable as output Can user enter a start and end month/date to define a period of interest rather than using only annual or monthly? Also, weather time scale information important to sectors - e.g. Caribbean health sector, in particular, reports weekly Variables other than rainfall and temperature are important for sectors relative humidity, evapotranspiration, wind speed and direction, solar radiation With these variables in ClimPACT, calculate a number of multi variable indices e.g. temperature humidity indices for heat stress in animals, indices other than SPI that can be more tailored to agricultural and hydrological drought, wind chill?

6 Some other thoughts So aren t relevant sector specific climate indices not therefore circumstance (e.g. crop, catchment, soil) specific? Could one size fit all, or most? Specific thresholds may be important? Further, research into developing the (extreme) indices pertained mainly to the reality of mid-latitudes rather than the tropics

7 Lesson 1: More work on the development of sectorspecific climate information (including indices) needed in terms of hydrological drought, how does that [drought] translate to what actually happens on the ground? Because in the case of Dominica, we have a lot of water to begin with, the 14 drought means we have a reduction in 12 precipitation, but in terms of how that 10 actually impacts what s happening on 8 6 the ground, that s still another 4 question... (Water stakeholder, 2 Dominica) 0 # of countries Production of sectorspecific climate indices at national level Production of sector specific climate indices n=22 No Yes

8 Lesson 2: Many barriers to the development of sector-specific climate information and indices exist # of countries Sunshine duration Climate observation programme gaps Incoming solar radiation Upper air wind speed and direction Sector data needs to be rigorously collected and managed as like the climate data and compatible format Caribbean Climate Impacts Database (CID) developed to support research and modelling for sector specific impacts-based forecasting Cloud properties # of countries A research division of the NMHS No Yes A long-term research strategy # of countries Funding support for research in sector and climate applications Lack of documentation of user needs RMP gaps 2 RMP gaps 1 Climate databases for individual sectors Lack of appropriate applied models for sectors Climate impacts reporting Established research partnerships Strongly disagree Disagree Neither agree/disagree Agree Strongly agree No Yes Don t know n=22

9 Lesson 3: A multi-pronged approach to development is key Baseline of user needs and provider capacity Methods: 2 regional surveys (194 users; 22 NMHSs) 37 user interviews 7 focus groups (3 user; 4 provider) Co-development of sectorspecific climate indices Facilitates broader dialogue and sustained engagement with regional and national stakeholders; Facilitates the identification and sharing of textual and georeferenced sectoral datasets; Facilitates the identification and sharing of historical climaterelated impact data; Supports the conduct of research that examines associations between climatic variables and relevant sectoral productivity outcomes; and Promotes the dissemination of climate information.

10 Future Priorities High hanging Fill gaps on GFCS pillars (particularly OBS and MON and RMP) Link indices to impacts forecasting for sectoral decision-making Implement insights from user research which have already identified user defined sectorspecific indices Low hanging

11 Sectoral EWISACTs Roadmap

12 To be continued Thank you