pascal peduzzi, unep, 2011 geoss support for ipcc assessments session 1: data users and data...

Pascal Peduzzi, UNEP, 2011

GEOSS support for IPCC assessments

SESSION 1: DATA USERS AND DATA PROVIDERSData needs and priorities of the research community

Geneva,1st February 2011

Global Change impacts:From ice to water & forests to fires

Pascal Peduzzi


Cyclones

Forests

Fires

Glaciers

Water

An overview


Glaciers


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


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?



In the Himalaya, glaciers will all be gone by 2035.


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?


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).


Water: Rive flow data

Understanding impacts on water supply requests good data on river flow.

This is also needed for modelling floodsThe 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.


11 stations in France, 11 in Portugal938 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)

http://www.bafg.de/GRDC/


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.

http://floodobservatory.colorado.edu/


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.

http://preview.grid.unep.ch


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.


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) http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/ibtracs/

Global tropical cyclones wind buffers will be available for 1970 to 2009.http://preview.grid.unep.ch


Deforestation


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.


Deforestation, less rain.

Most models show that deforestation will decrease precipitation in tropical areas.

(e.g Hasler N., Werth D. and Avissar R., 2009).


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, 2010.

More CO2 was supposed to increase photosynthesis (Nemani et al., 2003). But recent measurements on the warmest decades (2000-2009) show that the creation of biomass is slower. (Zao & Running, 2010) Photosynthesis also request H2O, which may be the limiting factors

We thought that with more CO2, 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)


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.


Positive feedbacks

LessPhotosynthesis

LessCarbon sinks

Warmer temperatures

More CO2

More droughts

Less precipitationsHigher temperatures

MoreForest fires

DeforestationClimate change, deforestation, drought and forest firesA triple-loop of positive feedbacks

Peduzzi et al. (in prep.)


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.


Data on risk, natural hazardsThe PREVIEW Global Risk Data Platform

http://preview.grid.unep.ch/

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.


www.grid.unep.ch

Http://preview.grid.unep.ch

Thank you

pascal peduzzi, unep, 2011 geoss support for ipcc assessments session 1: data users and data...

Documents

grdc data

water flow

new data

data users

data providersdata

water forests

common baseline data

global change impacts