IRI’s Climate Briefing for February

My first attempt at live-blogging. I hope to do this once a month. The International Research Institute for Climate and Society has its climate briefings on the third Wednesday of each month. The forecasts presented at the briefing are made available on the net assessment page usually by the following Thursday morning.

Bear with me folks, I’m sure my speed writing will improve in time! Here goes…

Michael Bell starts with an overview for January…

• By Jan 2008 we saw a moderate La Niña event compared to past events.
• Negative SST anomalies in the west and central Pacific have strengthened but weakened in the eastern Pacific.
• Surface air temperature-in January very strong cold anomaly in central and southwest Asia. Some of these are in the lowest 10% of the climatological distribution for the regions. For example, the publicized cold snap in Afghanistan has resulted in 882 deaths and 130,000 livestock deaths as of Feb 14th. Also a rise in acute respiratory infections. We also see a pretty strong warm anomaly over eastern Canada, extending into northeast U.S.
• Precipitation anomalies- In indian Ocean we now see a strong negative anomaly whereas in December it was positive.

(He shows a cool animated graphic of outgoing longwave radiation.)

• On to precipitation teleconnections. How does it compare to patterns we normally associate with La Niña? In South America, we see below normal precipitation anomalies. Above normal in southern Africa, a hint of below normal in East Africa. Australia we see above normal precipitation in the east, drier in the west. In North America, we see dry conditions in southeastern U.S. We don’t see much going on in northern South America, where there’s usually a strong wet signal.

Now Tony with the forecasts…his title is “Moderate-Strong La Niña continue”

• Monthly average is -1.8 for Nino 3.4, which is strong according to NOAA’s definition.
• Last three months we see La Niña expanding to the west quite strongly. Very canonical looking pattern.
• This La Niña is on par strength-wise with those of the late 1990s and early 2000s, but not as strong as the 1988-89 one.
• Instead of seeing enhanced trade winds, we see winds radiating outward from the cold anomalies.
• There’s also a slug of deeper warmer water coming in from the west. Could this mean the end of La Niña? Not sure, because we also see a reinforcement of the cold anomalies in the east.
• Shuhua shows us that most of the modes showing strong-to-moderate La Niña for next few seasons.
• The probabilistic forecast for February shows a 95% chance for La Niña for the February-March-April season and by the middle of the year (June-July-August), we’re looking at a 45% chance for La Niña, 45% for neutral and a 10% chance for an El Nino.
• We see a typical La Niña signature in the seasonal climate forecast: dry in southeast Asia, slightly wet in northeastern Brazil, dry in southern U.S., dry in northeast Africa and west Asia.
• For precipitation forecasts, we start to see an above normal Sahel precipitation pattern for JJA season. So we see somewhat of a La Niña condition climate persisting into the next ENSO cycle.
• We also see a strong above-normal signal for temperatures in the southwestern U.S. that extends into the summer months.

IRI data on NASA’s mapping tool

Users of IRI’s Malaria Map Room and desert locust monitoring tools for Africa can now take advantage of SERVIR, NASA’s high-tech satellite visualization system, thanks to a new plugin developed by scientists at the Institute for the Application of Geospatial Technology [IAGT] and IRI.

As with other mapping browsers such as Google Earth, SERVIR allows users to zoom from satellite altitude to any place on Earth, and even tilt their viewing angle so that they can “fly” across a 3-D terrain. What’s more, the software taps into dozens of high-resolution satellite-image sources such as MODIS and Landsat. Users can add layers that show temperature, rainfall, cloud cover over the entire globe. They can even overlay animated weather events, such as hurricanes.

Read the more about this on the IRI’s web site.

And check out IRI’s media page.

IRI, COP13 and other acronyms

Wish I could join my crew on the Island of the Gods, but I need to tend to business at the office. But here’s what we’re up to…

Scientists from the International Research Institute for Climate and Society will be speaking at various events during this year’s Conference of the Parties in Bali, Indonesia. Most notably, the IRI and some of its Indonesian partners will be hosting a side event on Wednesday, December 5, at the Grand Hyatt Hotel. The event will focus on the challenges decision makers face in managing climate risks, and will showcase the efforts of two countries, Indonesia and the Philippines, that are making important strides on this critical issue.

“This COP is especially significant in light of this year’s IPCC findings, which signal the now urgent need to come to grips with managing climatic risks globally,” says Director-General Steve Zebiak. “The IRI will be there to share our experience in helping countries become more resilient to climate changes, and to highlight the importance of this agenda to sustainable development.”

The side event, called Managing Climate Risks for Adaptation and Mitigation:New Initiatives in Southeast Asia will analyze the broader opportunities and obstacles for tackling climate impacts in the region, and features a high-level panel that will share insights and expertise:

• Anton Apriyantono, Minister of Agriculture, Government of Indonesia
• Rajendra Pachauri, Chairman, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Director-General of The Energy and Resources Institute (by audio conference)
• Jeffrey D. Sachs, Director, The Earth Institute at Columbia University (by audio conference)
• Stephen E. Zebiak, IRI’s Director-General

The side event will also highlight efforts of Indonesia and the Philippines, demonstrating new approaches to managing climate change risks by integrating cutting-edge climate information with agriculture, water and land management policies. Presentations by:

• Anton Apriyantono, Minister of Agriculture, Government of Indonesia, on strategies for addressing risks from climate variability and change for agriculture and food security in Indonesia
• Pacita Barba, National Water Resources Board, Philippines, on the integration of climate forecasts in decision making for usage of the Angat Reservoir for urban and agricultural needs
• Johan Kieft, CARE Indonesia, on the potential use of climate forecasts to better plan for the mitigation of destructive peatland fires in Central Kalimantan

The event will conclude with the signing of a memorandum of understanding between IRI and the Ministry of Agriculture of Indonesia to collaborate on research that advances the understanding of climate variability and change and to develop strategies for agricultural risk management in the country.

For full details, visit the IRI’s features page.

A decade of multiseasonal climate forecasts

Latest spotlight on IRI’s work.

October marks the tenth anniversary of IRI’s monthly net assessment forecasts, which are a series of freely available maps that show temperature and rainfall predictions for every region of the world.

The IRI Forecast group looks back on the evolution of this popular service, and shares a few of its favorite anecdotes from the past ten years. But first, a bit about what the IRI forecasts are all about.

On the third Thursday of each month, IRI releases a series of regional and global maps that show the probability of any particular area having above-normal, near-normal or below-normal temperatures and rainfall in a three-month period. The forecasts extend six months into the future.

In October, for example, users can view the forecasts for the November-December-January, December-January-February, January-February-March, and February-March-April periods. Of course, the further away from the current month one gets, the less confident the forecast.

Still, it’s important to go out six months because many of IRI’s forecast users need a long lead time to take action, says Tony Barnston, who runs the forecast operations.

“During La Niña, for example, there is a greater likelihood of above average rainfall in Botswana, which could pose an increased threat to epidemic malaria. Several months of lead time provide a needed margin of safety in planning mitigative action such as spraying or immunization,” he says. Moreover, there are some situations where forecasts can still have fairly good confidence at longer lead times. “For example, an El Niño-Southern Oscillation episode that has developed by August is very likely to still be occurring in December and January,” says Barnston.

The IRI produces its net assessments by using current and forecast sea-surface temperature data to drive model-based predictions of how the atmosphere will change during the next several months. But the atmosphere is a chaotic system, and small changes in current conditions can result in big differences in the seasonal patterns that models predict, so a single prediction doesn’t tell the whole story. Instead, the IRI runs multiple models numerous times to get its best estimate of the upcoming season’s mean climate.

Read the rest of this story here.

Visit the Net Assessments main page, to sign up to receive monthly email alerts when new forecasts are posted, access ten years of archives, a tutorial on forecasts and other resources.

Malaria and dengue fever in Colombia

This week’s IRI feaure

Each year in Colombia, more than 100,000 people get sick from malaria and approximately 42,000 come down with dengue fever. Now, the national government has enlisted IRI’s help in using climate risk management in an ongoing project to improve its early-warning system for the two diseases. The work is overseen by the World Bank and funded by Global Environmental Facility (GEF) and Colombia.”What makes this work fresh and exciting is its approach,” says Walter Baethgen, director of IRI’s Latin America and Caribbean Program. “We have here a project on climate-change adaptation, funded by large and respected global institution, that is looking at ways to reduce a society’s current vulnerabilities to climate as a means of improving its future ability to adapt. This isn’t about projections fifty or hundred years from now, which mean little to people already having to deal with climate risks today.”Colombia spends $15 million annually to try to control malaria and dengue, according to Gilma Mantilla, who, until recently, ran the infectious-disease surveillance program at the Instituto Nacional de Salud (INS). Mantilla says that climate change may have profound impacts on the transmission dynamics of dengue and malaria in the country. [image: James Gathany/CDC]
Read the rest of the story here

Climate Adaptation in a Development Context (IRI feature)

The IRI and the United Nations Development Programme have partnered to help bring climate risk management into the development planning process of Asian countries.”Climate, now and in the future, poses high risks as well as opportunities for the advancement of households, communities and societies,” says Shiv Someshwar, director of IRI’s Asia and Pacific Program. “Realizing the benefits requires more collaboration and cooperation between the adaptation and the development communities. Furthermore,their efforts need to be guided by the demands of those stakeholders who stand to gain or lose the most from the impacts of climate change.”In April, the two organizations held a workshop in Nepal, Managing Risks of a Changing Climate to Support Development, that convened delegates from Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Philippines, Sri Lanka and Vietnam. They released a report about the workshop proceedings last week.To read more about this, visit here.