Pascal Peduzzi, UNEP, 2011 GEOSS support for IPCC assessments SESSION 1: DATA USERS AND DATA PROVIDERS Data needs and priorities of the research community Geneva,1st February 2011 Global Change impacts: From ice to water & forests to fires Pascal Peduzzi

Pascal Peduzzi, UNEP, 2011 Cyclones Forests Fires Glaciers Water An overview

Pascal Peduzzi, UNEP, 2011 Glaciers

Pascal Peduzzi, UNEP, 2011 Observations: In the five Central Asian countries (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan), 40% of the population depends on glacier melt for their water needs (90% for agriculture). Question: what are the impacts of glacier retreat on water supply? Issues: - Monitoring is declining (even collapsing) since the end of USSR. - Most data is in paper format - Lack of cooperation between the countries Glaciers and related issues

Pascal Peduzzi, UNEP, 2011 Observations: Glaciers in South America have significantly decreased,… Question: is it due to higher temperatures, decline of precipitations, or both? Issue: 20,000 US$ requested to access the data from 5 meteorological stations. Are funds for maintaining stations sufficient? Glaciers and related issues

Pascal Peduzzi, UNEP, 2011 In the Himalaya, glaciers will all be gone by Glaciers and related issues OK, that’s might not be true, but now people want to know when! Issue: It’s a vast region and the issue of disputed territories between countries (China, India, Pakistan, Bhutan and Nepal), makes the assessment more difficult to undertake. Need for an external look?

Pascal Peduzzi, UNEP, 2011 Glaciers : Questions World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS) has the mandate for centralising the information. Can we develop a common baseline data set on glacier monitoring, climate and hydrology? Re-activation of the monitoring for new data in some regions is essential. Coordination between ongoing international projects – e.g. WGMS, Global Terrestrial Network for Glaciers (GTN-G), World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), the Global Runoff Data Centre (GRDC) – and the regional projects - Central Asian Water (CAWa), the future Central Asian Regional Glaciological Centre or the Global Environment Facility (GEF).

Pascal Peduzzi, UNEP, 2011 Water: Rive flow data Understanding impacts on water supply requests good data on river flow. This is also needed for modelling floods The Global Runoff Data Centre (GRDC) has the mandate (from WMO) to centralise the river flow data and to distribute them. This is based on voluntary contributions,… countries are not so generous.

Pascal Peduzzi, UNEP, stations in France, 11 in Portugal 938 stations in France, on request 211 stations in Portugal, directly available on-line for download Water : River flow data 39 stations in India Filter: min. 7 years, 12 months: 6,904 stations GRDC data (as of 2008)

Pascal Peduzzi, UNEP, 2011 Water: floods events data Global monitoring of floods events, done by DFO… Data are not freely accessible, but also used to finance the team. Most events detected by MODIS sensors, more radar images would be an asset.

Pascal Peduzzi, UNEP, 2011 Water: modelling flood UNEP/GRID-Europe made a first global flood model. It is based on hydroshed (90m resolution) Issue: hydroshed has been “burned” to allow water flow in the correct direction. This makes digital cliffs where modelled waters disappears.

Pascal Peduzzi, UNEP, 2011 Water: questions Is it because data on water is a touchy issue for countries? Is it due to collected on voluntary basis? Would data collected directly from WMO be more incentive for governmental agencies? Can we imagine two type of accesses: a) for climate change and risk studies (free & automatic) b) other studies, on special request.

Pascal Peduzzi, UNEP, 2011 Cyclones: good news Data used to be “non-centralised” in 9 centres, each of them with their own unit. Some data were only available in paper format. Now we have IBtrACS (vs 3) Global tropical cyclones wind buffers will be available for 1970 to

Pascal Peduzzi, UNEP, 2011 Deforestation

Pascal Peduzzi, UNEP, 2011 Deforestation

Pascal Peduzzi, UNEP, 2011 Forest Question: What is the deforestation rates? This is also needed for REDD Issue 1: What is a forest ? Definitions has changed over the years. Issue 2: except ESA GlobeCover 2005 and 2008, the previous landcover were based on different satellite sensors, legends were different, thus preventing comparisons.

Pascal Peduzzi, UNEP, 2011 Deforestation, less rain. Most models show that deforestation will decrease precipitation in tropical areas. (e.g Hasler N., Werth D. and Avissar R., 2009).

Pascal Peduzzi, UNEP, 2011 Forest: less biomass produced Figure 2 Spatial pattern of terrestrial NPP linear trends from 2000 through 2009 sources: with kind permission of Zhao and Running, More CO 2 was supposed to increase photosynthesis (Nemani et al., 2003). But recent measurements on the warmest decades ( ) show that the creation of biomass is slower. (Zao & Running, 2010) Photosynthesis also request H 2 O, which may be the limiting factors We thought that with more CO 2, there would be more photosynthesis, thus more biomass (Nemani et al. 2003). But it is not the case. Water might be the limitation factor (Zao & Runnin, 2010)

Pascal Peduzzi, UNEP, 2011 Forest: drought, more fires More drought, more forest fires (Van der Werf et al. 2008) More drought more forest fires. From Van der Werf et al., (2008), reproduced with kind permission from the authors and courtesy of National Academy of Science.

Pascal Peduzzi, UNEP, 2011 Positive feedbacks Less Photosynthesis Less Carbon sinks Warmer temperatures More CO 2 More droughts Less precipitations Higher temperatures More Forest fires Deforestation Climate change, deforestat ion, drought and forest fires A triple- loop of positive feedbacks Peduzzi et al. (in prep.)

Pascal Peduzzi, UNEP, 2011 Forest and Fires Need more researches on these positive feedbacks (deforestation, drought, forest fires, climate change). Need better data on deforestation (comparable through time) This is not only data that we need. We need more political will to tackle these issues, there is enough knowledge to take actions.

Pascal Peduzzi, UNEP, 2011 Data on risk, natural hazards The PREVIEW Global Risk Data Platform The PREVIEW Global Risk Data Platform provides 60 global layers of data on natural hazard, exposure and risk. Supported by UNISDR, UNEP, World Bank and UNDP.

Pascal Peduzzi, UNEP, Thank you