Glacier monitoring, capacity building and related cryospheric research in Central Asia

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Hoelzle ◽  
Martina Barandun ◽  
Tomas Saks ◽  
Erlan Azisov ◽  
Abror Gafurov ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Risk Reduction ◽  
Disaster Risk Reduction ◽  
Water Resource Management ◽  
Disaster Risk ◽  
Tien Shan ◽  
Water Runoff ◽  
Adaptation Measures ◽  
Climate Services

<p>Climate change is a major challenge for humanity and the related global implications will influence and threaten future economies and livelihood of coming generations, especially in developing countries. Central Asia is one of the regions mostly vulnerable to climate change considering its hydrological constraints. Tien Shan and Pamir, are among the largest mountain systems of the world, and play a significant role in serving water to the arid and continental region. Future water resources in Central Asia depend strongly on the cryosphere, particularly on snow, glaciers and permafrost. These cryospheric components store enormous amounts of fresh water and under the ongoing climate warming, expected changes will play an important role for future water availability in the region. Recent research clearly points out that a) for current climate conditions, water release by the cryosphere, particularly glaciers, is fundamental to keep runoff sufficient during the dry summer months and b) at the end of this century the water contribution of glaciers will be drastically reduced. Certain catchments are expected to completely dry-out. This setting creates a complex set of future challenges in the domains of water management, energy production, irrigation, agriculture, environment, disaster risk reduction, security and public health and potential political tension and conflicts between the countries cannot be excluded.</p><p>Notably, climate change also poses challenges in the field of climate services, as the lack of reliable data and commitment of the governments to fully integrate their observatory systems inhibits the sustainable adaptation and development of the region. At this point, the project CICADA (Cryospheric Climate Services for improved Adaptations) is currently contributing to the improvement of the Cryospheric Climate Services in the Central Asian countries by installing modern monitoring infrastructure, by training local students and researchers and by using the collected in situ measurements in combination with remote sensing and modelling to provide climate scenarios and services for water runoff and natural hazards. This is a prerequisite to allow early planning and adaptation measures within the water resource management and disaster risk reduction sectors.</p>

When the unprecedented becomes precedented: Lessons from Cyclones Idai and Kenneth

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen MacClune ◽  
Rachel Norton
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Risk Reduction ◽  
Disaster Risk Reduction ◽  
Early Warning Systems ◽  
Disaster Risk ◽  
Climate Services ◽  
Humanitarian Response ◽  
Early Action ◽  
Future Events ◽  
Climate Hazards

<p>Learning from global disasters — understanding what happened, the successes that prevented impacts from being worse, and the opportunities to reduce risk to future events — is critical if we are to protect people from increasingly extreme weather. Population growth is overtaxing ecosystems and climate change is creating new and intensifying existing climate hazards. Proactive and collaborative efforts are needed between all levels, from local to international, and across sectors connecting social science, economics, policy, infrastructure and the environment, to address these challenges. Perhaps most urgently, however, is the need to harness humanitarian response, development, disaster risk reduction, and climate change adaptation to work in concert – we can no longer afford to deliver these needs in isolation.</p><p>In March and April 2019 Cyclones Idai and Kenneth – two of the most destructive and powerful cyclones to ever hit southeast Africa – resulted in a widespread humanitarian disaster in Malawi, Mozambique and Zimbabwe, the impacts of which continue today in terms of livelihoods lost, food insecurity, and loss of permanent shelter for thousands. Damages were intensified by the novel nature of the impacts – the storms brought with them climate threats that were new to the areas and people impacted, leading to greater failure of existing preparedness and response mechanisms than might have been expected.</p><p>This talk will present learnings from a study conducted by members of the Zurich Flood Resilience Alliance on the impacts of Cyclones Idai and Kenneth, highlighting opportunities for building multi-hazard resilience to future events. In particular, we will highlight the opportunities we found for strengthening resilience, even when challenged by entirely new climate hazards, through strengthening early warning systems and climate services, building capacity and resourcing for early action, supporting the construction of resistant homes and development of more diverse farming practices, and, most crucially, by better connecting humanitarian response and Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) efforts.</p><p>These lessons are part of a series of Post-event Review Capability (PERC) learnings conducted by Zurich since 2013. The PERC methodology (available at: https://www.floodresilience.net/perc) supports broad, multi-sectoral resilience learning from global disaster events and identifies key actions for reducing future harm.</p><div></div><div></div><div></div><div></div>

scholarly journals Climate Services to Support Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change Adaptation in Urban Areas: The CLARITY Project and the Napoli Case Study

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giulio Zuccaro ◽  
Mattia Federico Leone
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Risk Reduction ◽  
Climate Change Adaptation ◽  
Disaster Risk Reduction ◽  
Disaster Risk ◽  
European Level ◽  
Urban Microclimate ◽  
Climate Services ◽  
Earth Observations ◽  
The City

Climate services are emerging worldwide as an essential tool to bridge the advancement in climate science and meteo/earth observations with a variety of operational fields in the domains of Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and Climate Change Adaptation (CCA). It is multidisciplinary study area with promising applications in the field of urban microclimate simulations, supporting climate-resilient redevelopment actions at both the city and neighborhood levels. The CLARITY CSIS (Climate Services Information System, available at https://csis.myclimateservice.eu/), developed within the H2020 CLARITY project, is an innovative hazard/impact modeling tool that takes into account short- to long-term climate change scenarios and urban microclimate variability. Disaster risks associated with climate change, such as heat waves and floods, are concentrated in limited periods of the year and therefore not adequately represented by annually averaged values. To this aim, new datasets have been extracted from Regional Climate Models to estimate the frequency of extreme temperatures and precipitation events until 2100, and a novel modeling methodology has been developed to capture the effect on the urban microclimate due to specific built environment features. The wide amount of data generated by satellite earth observations and made available at pan-European level through the Copernicus datasets (e.g., Urban Atlas, European Settlement Map, etc.) has been processed through specific algorithms and GIS spatial analysis tools to extract detailed information related to key parameters linked to urban morphology and surface types. In addition to the “screening service” available at the pan-European level through the CLARITY CSIS, an “expert service” workflow allows increasing the resolution of hazard and impact simulations at 250 m, by exploiting detailed land use datasets provided by local end-users and assessing the DRR/CCA potential of city-wide adaptation plans, as well as of specific district redevelopment projects. This paper will present the features of CLARITY CSIS and the results of Expert Services implemented for the City of Naples, focusing on the methods adopted to implement hazard/impact assessments and how information from climate services is tailored to support the integration of different DRR/CCA strategies within urban plans and projects.

Climate Services for Meteorological Disaster Risk Reduction in China

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lianchun Song ◽  
Yujie Wang
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Risk Management ◽  
Risk Reduction ◽  
Disaster Risk Reduction ◽  
Disaster Risk ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Disaster Risk Management ◽  
Climate Services ◽  
Meteorological Disaster ◽  
Meteorological Disasters

<p><strong>ABSTRACT</strong></p><p>  China belongs to monsoon climate suffering from a wide-range of meteorological disasters such as flood, drought, typhoon, heat wave, frost, haze, sandstorm and etc. Many of these disasters have become more frequent and resulted in more significant impacts on socio-economy development in China in recent decades, and this can be attributed to climate change in part. From 1984 to 2018, the average annual direct economic loss caused by meteorological disasters reached $29 billion, accounting for 1.8% of the GDP coupled with a death toll of up to 3710 people. It is of major national importance to provide high-quality, useable climate services to help manage and reduce the risk of meteorological disasters, as well as to aid sustainable development.</p><p>We describe the climate services for the whole cycle of disaster risk management including risk identification, risk warning, disaster prevention, restoration and reconstruction in China. Based on the practices of National Climate Center(NCC) of China Meteorological Administration, we summarize the benefits, experiences and challenges of climate services for meteorological disaster risk reduction in China.</p><p>Firstly, identifying and understanding climate risks are fundamental for effective disaster risk management. In addition to short term risk management, such climate services assist in building long term resilience through restoration and reconstruction which focus on reducing the underlying risk factors, siting critical infrastructure, transferring risks and strengthening disaster preparedness capacity. Secondly, China has established successful working approaches, such as government leadership, coordination among different sectors, and participation from key communities, to more effectively manage disasters. Thirdly, capacity building of climate services for disaster risk reduction is very important. NCC has established a climate impact assessment service platform including comprehensive climate risk assessment indicators, quantitative assessment of the scope, intensity, duration and losses in meteorological disasters. These services are tailored to decision-making for the effective management of disasters for society. Finally, we discuss the challenges of climate services for disaster risk reduction. Many decision-makers in climate sensitive sectors have insufficient awareness of their vulnerability to future climate change. In fact, decision-makers would benefit from better understandings of climate-related hazards and impacts. A more comprehensive assessment of the risk of meteorological-related disasters needs undertaking, along with an analysis of the vulnerability of the hazard-affected system and interactions between meteorological-related disasters and socio-economic systems.</p>

scholarly journals Socio-Economic Analysis of Climate Services in Disaster Risk Reduction: A Perspective on Pacific SIDS

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Newth ◽  
Geoff Gooley ◽  
Don Gunasekera
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Economic Analysis ◽  
Risk Reduction ◽  
National Economy ◽  
Disaster Risk Reduction ◽  
Disaster Risk ◽  
Future Climate Change ◽  
Small Island ◽  
Climate Services

This paper explores methods and the key factors influencing socio-economic analysis of the role of climate services in disaster risk reduction, with a regional emphasis on Small Island Developing States in the western tropical Pacific. We analyse the role of traditional benefit-cost analysis especially in the context of evaluating the importance of science-based climate change services (i.e., relevant to current and future climate change over multi-decadal timescales) in disaster risk reduction at a national economy level. Our analysis is premised on a range of relevant social and economic metrics at a national economy scale, including surrogate indicators for specific disaster risk reduction sensitive sectors in context of both mitigation (transitional risk) and adaptation (physical risk) to climate change. Relative importance of different methodologies of socio-economic analysis (i.e., partial/sectoral vs economy-wide modelling), gaps in relevant data and information, and the role of the public and private sectors in mobilising resources and capability for facilitating such analysis are explored. Our paper also discusses the issues relating to investing in, producing and undertaking on-ground applications associated with disaster risk reduction using climate change services for both public good and private (-for-profit) benefit outcomes, and provides suggestions for further research to improve socio-economic analysis of Climate Information Services impacts.

scholarly journals Coastal Climate Change Adaptation and Disaster Risk Reduction: A Review of Policy, Programme and Practice for Sustainable Planning Outcomes

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (16) ◽  
pp. 6450 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emmanuel Tolulope Busayo ◽  
Ahmed Mukalazi Kalumba
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Risk Reduction ◽  
Climate Change Adaptation ◽  
Disaster Risk Reduction ◽  
Model Problem ◽  
Disaster Risk ◽  
Problem Analysis ◽  
Analysis Model ◽  
Adaptation Measures ◽  
Sustainable Planning

Climate change and disaster risk are serious concerns considering the vulnerability of coastal areas and cities to various climate-disaster threats. Hence, the urban populace and planning stakeholders are grappling with the challenges of seeking ways to integrate adaptation measures into human livelihoods and planning systems. However, the synergy between climate change adaptation (CCA) and disaster risk reduction (DRR) remains fragmented and vague. Therefore, this review highlighted recent theoretical and practical methodologies for sustainable planning outcomes in relation to CCA and DRR themes. This paper provides a new model, Problem analysis model (PAM), designed to analyse Origin–Cause–Effect (impacts)–Risks identification and Answers to climate-related disaster at the local or community level. Lastly, three identified enablers were extensively discussed (policy, programme and practice) as a step towards the model implementation and to improve sustainable planning outcomes.

scholarly journals Blending Science and Community Voices for Multi-Scale Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Resilience: A Participatory Scenario Planning Approach

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alebachew Adem Nurye
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Local Government ◽  
Risk Reduction ◽  
Disaster Risk Reduction ◽  
Development Planning ◽  
Disaster Risk ◽  
Scenario Planning ◽  
Civil Society Organizations ◽  
Adaptation Measures ◽  
Key Words Climate Change

Climate change is a major development challenge to Ethiopia. Unless adaptation measures are widely implemented, climate change can set back development efforts and achievements by years. Recognizing this, the Government of Ethiopia (GoE) and civil society organizations have since recently been making considerable efforts to tackle the climate change problem. This paper documents the experience of CARE International in Ethiopia in facilitating bottom-up approaches to promote community-led disaster risk management and climate change adaptation planning through a participator scenario planning (PSP) methodology. PSP is a coordinated approach which leverages a variety of stakeholders' skills and mandates to explore potential climate change risks and their impacts, and then develop locally relevant and shared adaptation action plans that support livelihoods, social capital and ecosystem resilience. The approach has facilitated timely access to and communication of seasonal climate advisories which in turn is empowering communities to take advantage of opportunities that climate presents, which is a key part of adapting to climate change. The institutionalization of the approach by district and regional disaster prevention and food security coordination offices in the southern pastoral regions of Ethiopia encouraged integration of PSP into community livelihood adaptation and local government development planning, hence continuity of the process. Sustainability is expected to be fully achieved when local government planning processes recognize the importance of and provides resources for the participation of meteorological services and community forecasting experts to help refine plans on a seasonal basis, and for systems for dissemination of advisories. Key words: Climate Change, Disaster Risk Reduction, Adaptation, Pastoralism, Ethiopia,

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document