WMO Climate Monitoring Capabilities and Strategy for Development

1. WMO Climate Monitoring CapabilitiesandStrategy for Development Thomas C. Peterson National Climatic Data Center, NOAA Asheville, NC, USA and Omar Baddour World Meteorological Organization Geneva, Switzerland

2. Outline • Why Climate Monitoring is important • WMO’s Climate Monitoring activities • Strategies for developing and improving Climate Monitoring capabilities • Discussion

3. Consider a city running low on drinking water during a drought • If you were in charge of the city’s long-term water planning, what would you do?

4. The answer depends on climatic conditions • Is this is a once in 200 years drought or a once in 20 years drought? • Do long-term data (and model projections) indicate that droughts of this magnitude are tending to become more frequent or less frequent? • How could you possibly make the right decision without climate monitoring information?

5. Climate Variability and Change • Impacts numerous societal, economic and environmental aspects • Safety, health, food security, tourism, energy, etc. • Therefore, coping and adapting to these changes requires understanding their causes, magnitudes and extent, and to predict their impacts.

6. Climate Monitoring • Provides information needed for effective planning • As well as for operations to respond to extreme events WMO Bulletin April 2008

7. WMO Climate Monitoring Activities

8. WMO AnnualState of the Global Climate • Since 1993 • In collaboration with the WMO Commission for Climatology • Authoritative yet simple • E.g., 13 heavily illustrated pages

9. WMO also collaborates on the larger Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society’s Annual State of the Climate • Identifying potential authors • Encouraging interactions

10. CCl Expert Team on Climate Monitoring • Including the use of Satellite and marine data and products • Focused on what a small international team of experts could provide any NMHS trying to improve their climate monitoring

11. Expert Team Actions • Started out by providing information on Climate Monitoring to WMO Member States. • Web site with climate monitoring relevant links • A pamphlet to provide outreach to the community • Coordinating translation of the BAMS State of the Climate into Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, French and Russian so more people could read it • Publicizing important information • Such as Guidelines for plant phonological observations • Writing an article for the WMO Bulletin WMO Bulletin April 2008

12. By the time the 4 years ended • Focus evolved towards building and formalizing interactions • Enhancing collaboration between major global climate monitoring centers • Capacity building collaboration between a satellite agency and an individual NMHS • Lesson learned: • Interactions between scientists is the key first step towards improving climate monitoring

13. Strategy for Improving and Developing Climate Monitoring

14. The Key is Participation • Until one attempts to monitor the climate it is difficult to appreciate the many different things that need to come together in Climate Monitoring

15. The Importance of Historical Data • It is the long-term data that allow one to put current conditions into perspective • Rescue and digitize old records

16. The Importance of Homogeneity • Artificial discontinuities in the data can paint an erroneous climate picture • Rize, Turkey • Discontinuity verified by metadata indicating that station relocated in 1995

17. The Importance of Cross-Border Verification • Verification by seeing how local conditions fit into global and regional patterns • Highlights the importance of internationally sharing data and information

18. The Importance of Daily Data • Can’t globally monitoring daily temperature extremes • Yet extremes are more societal relevant than monthly average • Heat wave related to increased mortality • Cold extremes related to agricultural damages • The same is true for precipitation extremes • Long-term droughts can be monitored • But heavy flood producing precipitation events often can not be monitored globally and put into accurate historical perspective

19. The Importance of Information, not just Data • Even where data are not shared, other information can be • Indices of extremes coordinated by the joint CCl/CLIVAR/JCOMM Expert Team on Climate Change Detection and Indices • A challenge to address in near real-time • Reporting climate conditions in the annual State of the Climate report is enhancing cross-border exchange of information and collaboration on climate monitoring. • RCCs could play an important role

20. Hands-on Workshops are an Effective Strategy for Development • Not just listening and talking but doing also • Photos from Caribbean Climate Extremes workshop

21. Summary • Real-time global, regional and local climate monitoring poses tremendous challenges • A complex and multifaceted problem • Only by attempting climate monitoring can a full appreciation of all the processes come together • Regional workshops can jump start that process • Society needs this information to help guide adaptation to climate change

22. Those are our ideas on how to develop climate monitoring. What are yours?