Download II) Data Sites

Sources of Climate Information and
the WB Climate Data Portal
Michael I. Westphal
CC Team ENV
SDN Week 26/2/08
Oft-heard Questions




What’s out there?
What data are easily accessible?
What data are useful and important in the
development context?
- timeframe, variables, spatial scale (Are
GCMs too coarse?)
Is it all too uncertain? (Or the Paralysis of
Uncertainty)
Sources of Climate Information
I.) Documents/ Reports
 IPCC Fourth Assessment Report
(www.ipcc.ch)
 Limitations:
- Informational only, no data
- Generated by and for (?) climate
scientists
- Qualitative, difficult to bore down to
regions
- Most projections end of 21st Century
II) Data Sites

IPCC Data Portal (WCRP CMIP3 multimodel database)
(https://esg.llnl.gov:8443/)
- abstruse (netCDF) format, unusable to
development professionals
II) Data Sites
 Various CRU historical datasets
Tyndall:
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~timm/data/indextable.html
CGIAR:
http://cru.csi.cgiar.org/CRU_data_structure.asp
University of East Anglia
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/
-requires programming/GIS
sophistication
II) Data Sites
 WorldClim (www.worldclim.org)
- Historical bioclim variables ands
downscaling from 3 GCMs (IPCC 3AR)
-no measures of extreme precipitation;
rainfall variability
-requires programming/GIS sophistication
III) Visualisation Sites
 Hadley Centre
-One model, one point in time, limited
variables

(http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/hadleycentre/
models/modeldata.html)
National Center for Atmospheric Research
- More variables, more interactive but still one
point in time
- can download data
- one model
- missing variables to development? (rainfall
variability, variability, variability)
(www.gisclimatechange.org)
III) Visualisation Sites –
Current/historical climate
 International Research Institute for Climate
and Society – climatologies, drought,
anomalies, etc.
(http://portal.iri.columbia.edu/portal/server.pt)

NOAA Africa Desk - climatologies, drought,
anomalies, station data, etc.
(http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/african_des
k/)
IV) What about “desktop” models?
 MAGICC
(http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/~mikeh/software/magicc.
htm)

-More for exploring emissions; only basic
temp and SLR
PRECIS (Hadley Centre)
- (http://precis.metoffice.com)
- More for Met Bureaus
-A typical experiment (100 x100 grid) run on
a 2.8GHz machine: 4.5 months to complete a
30-year simulation!
… hence the need for a Climate
Data Portal
Niche of our Climate Data Portal
‘Light’ and quick, ease-of-use
Visualization, querying, data summarization
Pixel-level and country aggregation
More consonant with development timeframe
and variables (extreme precipitation/
temperature)
http://essdcharts.worldbank.org
Niche of our Climate Data Portal
Historical and Projected
GCMs and downscaling
Multimodel, model concordance/discordance
(uncertainty)
Not just 1 Climate Data
- Climate-related (natural disaster, crop yield
projections)
- Non-climate (socioeconomic)
Some Global Datasets
Type
Variables
Institute
Resolution
Climate Change Temp, Precip,
Projections
extreme rainfall
(High resolution metrics
GCM)
Meteorological
Research
Institute, Japan
20 km.
Climate Change
Projections
(IPCC GCMs)
Temp, Precip,
extreme
rainfall/temp
metrics
Various
Climate Change
Projections
Runoff
USGS (Milly et
al. 2008)
2°
Climate Change
Projections
Crop yield
changes/
suitability (14
crops)
IIASA, Austria
5’
1- 4°
Some Global Datasets
Type
Variables
Institute
Resolution
Natural Disaster
Hotspots
Floods, droughts,
landslides
(economic loss,
economic loss:
GDP, mortality)
WB/ Columbia
University
2.5’
Historical Climate
(CRU Dataset)
Monthly Temp,
Precip
University of East
Anglia/ CGIAR
0.5°
Planned Functionality
• Linkages with other tools, wiki
• Interfacing with Bank databases
• Spatially-referenced Knowledgebase
Acknowledgements
• Data suppliers:
•
- IPCC Data Portal (LLL)
- MRI, Japan
SDN IT Group
- Reza Firuzabadi
- Arvind Gowda, Dany Jones, Michael Kane,
Ritesh Sanan, Varuna Somaweera
Climate Needs for Bank?
•
•
•
•
•
•
Variables
Spatial Scale
Time Frame
Display of uncertainties
Format
Will this portal be useful? When? Modifications,
extensions?