Climate Assessment and Emerging Data Rescue Initiatives Manola Brunet 1,2,3 and Phil Jones 2 1 Centre for Climate Change (C3), Univ. Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain 2 Climatic Research Unit, School of Environmental Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK 3 Co-chair OPAG 2 on Monitoring and Analysis of Climate Variability and Change, WMO/CCl Technical Conference on Changing Climate and Demands for Climate Services, 16 February 2010, Antalya, Turkey

OUTLINE Why is important to develop high- quality climate data? Benefits for climate assessments Some ongoing & emerging DARE initiatives

Why is important to develop high-quality climate data? If we knew which models were accurate, we could predict the future more exactly If we knew really well the climate in the last 1000 years, we would know which models were accurate If we knew much better the climate of the past 200 years, we would know more precisely the climate of the last 1000 years Availability of good historical weather observations constrain the past and the future. Therefore the answer is: to better understand, detect, predict and respond to global climate variability and change

Placing climate records and extremes in the longer context

Detecting and attributing changes in climate extremes Schar et al , Nature,

Longer records for the assessment of proxy evidence

Some thoughts on previous, ongoing and emerging DARE activities & results Previous efforts over Africa haven’t led to much data being digitised/released. In South America and the Caribbean DARE activities have been better, but it’s hardly to see any result Some European countries are digitising/homogenising their holdings. Other countries like US, Canada, Australia, Japan, China are also digitising data as part from cooperative efforts (NMHS + Academia). But it’s important to get countries like India & Brazil joining the effort Getting more publicity (and raising awareness) for DARE results (projects) is a crucial issue (ACRE is doing well on this) Analysis of DARE cost/benefit should go along with proposals to emphasise benefits. DARE has initial expenses, but once a climate record is rescued/developed only return benefits, not costs Making recovered data available and improving accessibility, it is another imperative But getting resources (funds) for DARE projects is not easy, as research funding Agencies are not keen to fund them (this is a NMS stuff). So, you have to offer/emphasise research’s products in the proposals you make

Potential of climate data versus data availability: still considerable room for DARE activities DWD efforts

International DARE ongoing projects: Atmospheric Circulation Reconstructions over the Earth (ACRE) Observed climate at the moment Observed climate after ACRE Facilitate the recovery of historical instrumental surface terrestrial and marine global data for climate applications and impacts needs worldwide

ACRE & the 20th century Reanalysis project: the usefulness of DARE To underpin global historical 4D weather reanalyses over the last years, at high resolution (2º x 2º lat/lon & every 6 hours) using surface pressure data & state-of-the-art scientific capabilities. The product can be tailored and ‘downscaled’ for: regional to local climate applications (e.g. agricultural, environmental, societal, physical), climate impacts (e.g. risk of high impact phenomena), direct weather input into biophysical and production models or to constrain global climate models September 1938 New England

Emerging DARE Initiatives: The WMO MEditerranean climate DAta REscue (MEDARE) initiative A cooperative & integrated DARE initiative, endorsed by the WMO EC-60, bringing together scientists from NMHS, universities and research centres & aimed at Enhancing surface climate data availability over the GMR, which allow the countries and region to improve climate change scenarios & impacts assessments to define better strategies for adaptation Undertaking integrated DARE projects targeting the development of long & homogenised key climate records Capacity building on DARE, digitisation and the development of high-quality climate datasets, including homogenisation: DARE & H Composed of 23 Med NMHS, 11 research ctr & integrated by 100 scientists

MEDARE II Steering Group: Pierre Bessemoulin, Manola Brunet, Phil Jones, Sylvie Jourdain, Tania Marinova, Serhat Sensoy, Azzadine Sazi, Elena Xoplaki Steering Group: Pierre Bessemoulin, Manola Brunet, Phil Jones, Sylvie Jourdain, Tania Marinova, Serhat Sensoy, Azzadine Sazi, Elena Xoplaki Working groups: Working groups: WG1. Inventorying/assessing/approaching old material sources and holders. WG1. Inventorying/assessing/approaching old material sources and holders. WG2. DARE techniques and procedures (including digitization). WG2. DARE techniques and procedures (including digitization). WG3. Approaches on best practices for quality controlling and homogenizing specific climate variables. WG3. Approaches on best practices for quality controlling and homogenizing specific climate variables. WG4. Promotional activities, bringing MEDARE to the wider scientific and other communities WG4. Promotional activities, bringing MEDARE to the wider scientific and other communities

A Dutch-Indonesian initiative to rescue, digitize and disseminate data: The DiDaH project Project structure: International workshop in WMO’s DARE and Climate Extremes programs (Dec 2009) Digitisation of historical data from Indonesia at BMKG (Jan fall 2011): 35 man-years ca. 10M obs. Exchange of experts between KNMI & BMKG Five-day Climate Services workshop in Indonesia to advertise results & stimulate use (end 2011) A combination of activities leading to improve data availablity