A colleague has written a nice story about a new project at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society that aims to improve forecasting of the Indian monsoon…

In May and June each year, speculation about the coming of the monsoon fills newspapers and conversations across India. Urban dwellers eagerly await respite from overbearing heat. Investors scrutinize forecasts, trying to anticipate possible impacts on food prices. But none have more at stake than India’s over 100 million farming households.

The magnitude of these human and economic costs – particularly as concern grows over the potential for climate change to increase extreme weather patterns – has sparked interest in finding more ways to plan ahead. The International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University is partnering with Indian government agencies and universities in an innovative new research effort led by the government of India designed to improve monsoon forecasts and develop strategies that help farmers and policy makers prepare and act early, based on information tailored to their needs.

Read the rest here.

Photo: Sheshagiri Rao/IRI

©2010 autogeno.us. All Rights Reserved.

• Index insurance- can it help reduce poverty? (0)
• Index Insurance for Ethiopian Farmers (0)

Given this,the IRI is trying to use the opportunity to educate people about El Niño and its cooler sister, La Niña. We decided to do this by addressing some common misconceptions that our scientists come across when talking with people about these important climate phenomena. Such “list” stories are quite effective on the web and are favorites for people to spread via sharing and social networks.

I also kicked off a series of brief audio interviews with our top scientists to discuss how El Niño affects food production, health, water availability and other social concerns. By releasing these over a few months, I can keep communicating to journalists, policy makers, etc., that IRI staff has a deep and broad level of knowledge on the topic. Below are the first few paragraphs of the story. Enjoy, and share!

Forecasts by the IRI and other institutions show that a weak El Niño has developed in the equatorial Pacific, and is likely to continue evolving with warmer-than-normal conditions persisting there until early 2010.What exactly is this important climate phenomenon and why should society care about it? Who will be most affected? We address these questions as well as clear up some common misconceptions about El Niño, La Niña, and everything in between!

First, the basics.

El Niño refers to the occasional warming of the eastern and central Pacific Ocean around the equator. The warmer water tends to get only 1 to 3 degrees Celsius above average sea-surface temperatures for that area, although in the very strong El Niño of 1997-98, it reached 5 degrees or more above average in some locations. La Niña is the climatological counterpart to El Niño– a yin to its yang, so to speak. A La Niña is defined by cooler-than-normal sea-surface temperatures across much of the equatorial eastern and central Pacific. El Niño and La Niña episodes each tend to last roughly a year, although occasionally they may last 18 months or longer.

The Pacific is the largest ocean on the planet, so a significant change from its average conditions can have consequences for temperature, rainfall and vegetation in faraway places. In normal years, trade winds push warm water-and its associated heavier rainfall-westward toward Indonesia. But during an El Niño, which occurs on average once every three-to-five years, the winds peter out and can even reverse direction, pushing the rains toward South America instead. This is why we typically associate El Niño with drought in Indonesia and Australia and flooding in Peru. These changing climate conditions, combined with other factors, can have serious impacts on society, such as reduced crop harvests, wildfires, or loss of life and property in floods. There is also evidence that El Niño conditions increase the risk of certain vector-borne diseases, such as malaria, in places where they don’t occur every year and where disease control is limited.

During either an El Niño or a La Niña, we also observe changes in atmospheric pressure, wind and rainfall patterns in different parts of the Pacific, and beyond. An El Niño is associated with high pressure in the western Pacific, whereas a La Niña is associated with high pressure in the eastern Pacific. The ’seesawing’ of high pressure that occurs as conditions move from El Niño to La Niña is known as the Southern Oscillation. The oft-used term El Niño-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO, reminds us that El Niño and La Niña episodes reflect changes not just to the ocean, but to the atmosphere as well.

ENSO is one of the main sources of year-to-year variability in weather and climate on Earth and has significant socioeconomic implications for many regions around the world. The development of a new El Niño episode in recent months offers an opportunity to clear up some common misconceptions about the climate phenomenon:

El Niño periods cause more disasters than normal periods. On a worldwide basis, this isn’t necessarily the case. But ENSO conditions do allow climate scientists to produce more accurate seasonal forecasts and help them better predict extreme drought or rainfall in several regions around the globe. (Read a 2005 paper on the topic here.)

On a regional level, however, we’ve seen that El Niño and La Niña exert fairly consistent influences on the climate of some regions. For example, El Niño conditions typically cause more rain to fall in Peru, and less rain to fall in Indonesia and Southern Africa. These conditions, combined with socioeconomic factors, can make a country or region more vulnerable to impacts.

“On the other hand, because El Niño enhances our ability to predict the climate conditions expected in these same regions, one can take advantage of that improved predictability to help societies improve preparedness, issue early warnings and reduce possible negative impacts,” says Walter Baethgen who runs IRI’s Latin America and the Carribbean regional program.

El Niño and La Niña significantly affect the climate in most regions of the globe. Actually, they significantly affect only about 25% of the world’s land surface during any particular season, and less than 50% of land surface during the entire time that ENSO conditions persist.

Regions that are affected by El Niño and La Niña see impacts during the entire 8 to 12 months that the climate conditions last. No. Most regions will only see impacts during one specific season, which may start months after the ENSO event first develops. For example, the current El Niño may cause the southern U.S. to get wetter-than-normal conditions in the December to March season, but Kenyans may see wetter-than-normal conditions between October and December.

El Niño episodes lead to adverse impacts only. Fires in southeast Asia, droughts in eastern Australia, flooding in Peru often accompany El Niño events. Much of the media coverage on El Niño has focused on the more extreme and negative consequences typically associated with the phenomenon. To be sure, the impacts can wreak havoc in developing and developed countries alike, but El Niño events are also associated with reduced frequency of Atlantic hurricanes, warmer winter temperatures in northern half of U.S., which reduce heating costs, and plentiful spring/summer rainfall in southeastern Brazil, central Argentina and Uruguay, which leads to above-average summer crop yields.

Read the rest of the story and listen to an audio interview with IRI’s Director-General, Steve Zebiak.

©2010 autogeno.us. All Rights Reserved.

• Water Demand in the Philippines (0)
• The potential impacts of the current El Niño (0)

Pak-Ludo, my colleague from CARE, spent the better part of an afternoon driving me to some of the area villages outside of Kupang. It’s easy to see why people can have such difficulties making a living from farming here. The soil is rocky and shallow, and dust-dry.

[Photo: Kupang outskirts. Francesco Fiondella]

©2010 autogeno.us. All Rights Reserved.

• The climate-food security connection in Indonesia (1)
• Water Demand in the Philippines (0)

Not surprisingly, NTT faces real development challenges, including periods of serious food insecurity. Since irrigation systems are virtually nonexistent, farmers here are almost wholly dependent on monsoon rains to supply water to their crops. But even in years of normal rainfall, the province can expect to distribute between 20 and 25 thousand tons of food aid to families. During El Niño years, which typically result in significantly less rainfall, the aid figure can be twice that. Rates of malnutrition, especially in children, can reach 25% during these periods.

Scientists at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society want to reduce these impacts by using seasonal climate forecasts to alert government authorities about periods when below-average rainfall is expected. Indonesia has a good system in place to respond to food insecurity, but the challenge is generally one of timing. From the moment a problem is declared to the moment the first shipments of rice and other aid is unloaded, half a year may pass. The hope is to give agencies and humanitarian organizations such as CARE Indonesia months of lead time to stock up on food supplies, jump-start their monitoring activities and set aside funds and other resources in case the food problems materialize.

We’ve organized a workshop for tomorrow in NTT’s capital, Kupang, with CARE Indonesia, Bogor Agriculture University (IPB) and the provincial food-security agency in order to share the latest research findings and discuss their potential use in food-security planning. This latter goal is critical. We can issue the best forecasts in the world, but if there’s no institutional system in place to understand and act on them, they’re essentially useless.

Tough climate

Understanding the NTT’s climate is critical if one is to issue reliable forecasts. In general, the climate of NTT is drier than that of other regions of Indonesia. The monsoon rains typically arrive in late October or early November and end in mid-March. Rainfall levels vary significantly from year to year, and from location to location.

While historical climate data is scarce for the region, we have enough evidence to believe that El Niño events are strongly associated with delayed monsoon rains, below-normal rainfall and poor harvests. These are the times to worry about food insecurity. As if this wasn’t bad enough, NTT is also the only part of Indonesia to get hit with cyclones.

The people of NTT have been coping with climate variability for centuries and as such have been practicing their own form of climate risk management. One way they do this is by taking advantage of the localized rainfall variability, says Shiv Someshwar, who runs the IRI’s Asia program. Those who can, own smaller parcels of land in different agro-ecological zones: a few hectares in lowland areas, some more a few kilometers away on the slope of a mountain and still some more on the mountain’s opposite slope. In other parts of Indonesia, where rainfall variability is less localized, farmers tend to own fewer, larger plots.

With help from our CARE, IPB and food-security agency colleagues, I hope to be able to tour a few villages near Kupang to see how people live and work. We can cite endless statistics and pin up scores of maps to characterize climate variability, but these will never be as compelling as the stories told to us by those directly affected. I’ve got my camera in one hand, my recorder in the other and plenty of empty cards. Let’s go!

[Information for this entry comes from a report on a workshop on climate risk management in Southeast Asia, as well as my many breakfast and dinner conversations with colleague and fellow traveler, Esther Conrad, who coordinates the IRI's Asia/Pacific program]

Photo: Market fruit, Jakarta. Francesco Fiondella

©2010 autogeno.us. All Rights Reserved.

• Dry season in West Timor (0)
• Water Demand in the Philippines (0)

Everything runs smoothly in years of normal rainfall. But when the region gets below-normal rainfall-as is typically the case during an El Niño–the situation gets contentious.Angat’s water allocations, as well as those of reservoirs throughout much of the world, are guided by upper and lower ‘rule curves’, or thresholds. When the water level in the reservoir is above the upper rule curve, there is generally less tension. The reservoir meets both the domestic water supply and irrigation demands and hydropower can be generated. If the water level falls somewhere between the two thresholds, domestic water and irrigation needs can be met, but power generation is limited. But when the level drops below the lower threshold, trouble starts to brew. In the case of Angat, domestic water needs are always met first, and irrigation water is released only if the water level is above 180 meters, the reservoir’s minimum operating level.

In 1997 and 1998, for example, the reservoir had to stop releasing irrigation water because of low levels. Crops withered, farmers fumed. The magnitude and duration of the cutoff could have been minimized, however.

The problem with most rule curves is that they are static and very conservative. They’re usually based on long-term historical averages, without taking into consideration climate variability and seasonal forecasts.

The IRI has worked with a number of government agencies in the Philippines over the last five years to develop a reservoir model for Angat that integrates seasonal climate forecasts into the current water management strategy. Why is this important? Our simulations have shown that integrating forecasts into the decision-making process not only reduces the risk of over-allocating during dry years, but also maximizes agricultural and hydropower production during the wet years, and hopefully avoid unnecessary hardships, such as the reneging of promised irrigation water after farmers have already committed to planting.

Of course, having a great model is only part of the solution. The water allocation process for Angat is extremely complex and notoriously political. I’ll be learning and writing more about this process as I meet with representatives from all sides of the issue in the next few days.

[Note: source material for this entry comes from IRI reports and other documents, most of which can be found on the institution's Asia and Water pages.]

Photo: Water meter, Intramuros, Manila. Francesco Fiondella

©2010 autogeno.us. All Rights Reserved.

• Agricultural water management and climate risk (0)
• The climate-food security connection in Indonesia (1)

The organization has enlisted IRI’s expertise on index insurance to design contracts for poor farmers in a remote village in the Ethiopian highlands (larger map). The goal of the project is to improve farmers’ ability to manage drought risks and subsequently gain better access to credit. If all goes well, the two organizations and their local partners hope to export the success to other villages and potentially scale up the program to cover entire districts.

Read the full story by visiting the IRI web site.

©2010 autogeno.us. All Rights Reserved.

• Index insurance- can it help reduce poverty? (0)
• Audio slideshow about Ethiopia’s water resources (0)

The International Research Institute for Climate and Society and Swiss Re are jointly hosting a high-level policy roundtable on the use of index insurance for poverty reduction at this year’s Global Humanitarian Forum in Geneva. The roundtable, which takes place on June 24, will include leaders from fields as diverse as reinsurance, climate science, economics and food security, in an effort to gain insight on how index insurance can best serve today’s development needs.

What is index insurance? Click to expand.

Read the rest on the IRI features page

[Image credit: Dan Osgood]

©2010 autogeno.us. All Rights Reserved.

• Index Insurance for Ethiopian Farmers (0)
• IRI’s work to benefit farmers in India (0)

Feasible investments in agricultural water management are likely to bring the greatest livelihood benefit to the rural poor of sub-Saharan Africa and parts of South Asia if they are part of a comprehensive approach to managing climate risk, according to a new report from the International Research Institute for Climate and Society.

“Despite the known impacts of current climate risk and growing concern about future climate change, climate risk management remains conspicuously absent from many analyses and regional development strategies,” write Casey Brown and James Hansen, the authors of the report, called Agricultural Water Management and Climate Risk (download it here). The report was commissioned by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and will help guide the foundation’s investment strategy in agricultural and water development in the face of climate variability.

“We need to take a more holistic view of the risks that farmers face. We’ve found that conventional agricultural water management in combination with other climate risk management strategies can be a much more powerful engine of development than just the water management alone,” said Casey Brown, who leads IRI’s Water program.

Climate change is expected to exacerbate many development challenges in Africa and South Asia, but in ways that can only be partially anticipated. A growing body of evidence links climate-based water variability to poor economic growth in developing countries. For example, in sub-Saharan Africa agriculture accounts for 70% of employment and 35% of the region’s gross domestic product. Of the 183 million hectares of agricultural land there, only about 9 million are under some form of water management–mostly small-scale approaches, such as irrigation systems and farm ponds. Most farmers depend solely on rainwater to grow their crops.

Future efforts to increase agricultural productivity in the region will most likely center on more of these small-scale water management and storage strategies, note Brown and Hansen. While these provide mitigation of slight or moderate departures from normal rainfall, they are less capable of managing climate extremes such as droughts and floods, which threaten to reverse years of development gains.

The authors recommend that a strategy for investing in agricultural water management should include a multipronged approach to dealing with the full range of climate variability.

The authors propose three specific areas of investment that are timely, feasible and target a different layer of risk:

• Don’t assume climate is static. Develop a climate-informed investment strategy for water management.
• Support rural climate information services. Invest in climate data sets, work with national meteorological services to produce tailored seasonal forecasts, train employees of agriculture extension services and nongovernmental organizations to communicate climate information and risk, etc.
• Create integrated early warning systems. These support more timely and better coordinated response to climatic shocks such as droughts and floods that exceed the coping capacity of rural communities.

©2010 autogeno.us. All Rights Reserved.

• Water Demand in the Philippines (0)
• IRI’s work to benefit farmers in India (0)