Video on Climate Information for Humanitarian Preparation
Using Climate and Weather Forecasts to Improve Humanitarian Decision Making: A Partnership to Save Lives from IRI on Vimeo.
Our posse put together a brief video that highlights the partnership between the International Research Institute for Climate and Society, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and the Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Centre. We pulled it to together in record time for COP 15. I’m lucky to be able to work with a talented group- thanks Jason, Lisette and Michelle!
Filed under IRI related | Comment (0)Climate Research Committee’s newest member
With her recent appointment to the National Academies of Science’s prestigious Climate Research Committee, IRI scientist Lisa Goddard hopes to continue fostering connections between climate science and its use by decision makers.
I wrote a brief story about the news on the IRI home page.
Disasters: Shifting from Response to Prevention
I posted a web story on the IRI home page about the wonderful work of a few of our interns completed during assignments in West Africa and Central America…
Torrential rains lashed West and Central African countries this rainy season, setting off flooding and causing considerable damage. On the evening of June 26th alone, nearly 200 millimeters of rain fell on the villages of Malem Hoddar and Malem Thierigne in eastern Senegal. The ensuing flash floods killed at least one person, displaced dozens of families and destroyed hundreds of homes and livestock. As usual, the regional Red Cross office in Dakar mobilized its vast network of donors and volunteers to respond to this and other events. But this season, the organization also did something fundamentally different in its operations.
“It’s a revolution,” says Pablo Suarez, Associate Program Director at the Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Center. “Not only was this the first time a particular zone in West Africa used a particular forecast, it was the first time in the history of the Red Cross/Red Crescent movement that science-based information about something likely to happen was used to ask for aid,” he says.
A key player in this transformation was an IRI intern and Climate and Society masters student named Arame Tall. In early June, Tall went to work with the Disaster Management Unit of the Red Cross office for West and Central Africa (IFRC-WCAZ), based in Dakar, to find ways to incorporate forecasts and other climate information into Red Cross decision making.
Halfway across the globe, Tall’s classmates, Sarah Abdelrahim and Lisette Braman, were on a similar mission in Panama, working with forecasters at the Water Center for the Humid Tropics of Latin America and the Caribbean (CATHALAC).
The internships were the latest example of the ongoing, expanding partnership between the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and the IRI.
Complete story on the IRI features page.
Photo: Courtesy IFRC
IRI’s Climate Briefing for March
The striking picture shown here came in yesterday’s update from NASA’s Earth Observatory. It shows La Niña’s fingerprint in southern Africa.
How does La Niña—a cooling of the eastern Pacific Ocean—affect plant growth on the other side of the globe in Africa? La Niña occurs when strong trade winds blow across the Pacific Ocean. The winds push sun-warmed surface water west towards Australia. Cool water rises to replace the surface water in the east. As a result, the Pacific Ocean is cooler than normal in the east off South America and warmer in the west off Australia. Warm, moist air rises over the pool of warm water in the western Pacific, where it generates abundant rain in eastern Australia and Indonesia. The rising air travels east in the upper atmosphere, drops as cool, dry air over the eastern Pacific, and then blows west as the strong trade winds that drive La Niña.
Click for additional excerpt…
Reason I start with this is that for the last few months the IRI team has been forecasting a strong-to-moderate continuation of the phenomenon. This image, and one of Australia, also featured in NASA’s story, helps us to understand the real world effects of teleconnections. In Africa at least, the effects aren’t limited to greener landscapes. The increased chance of rains worried the World Health Organization enough to issue an alert in January for higher-than-normal number of malaria outbreaks in the region. You can read more about climate and malaria here.
Anyway, the briefing is starting. Let’s see what Tony and the gang have for us this month….
Filed under IRI related | Comment (0)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.
- 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.
(He shows a cool animated graphic of outgoing longwave radiation.)
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 says moderate-to strong La Niña conditions to continue
The latest set of forecasts from the International Research Institute for Climate and Society indicate that we’re going to see La Niña persist at least into late spring.
La Niña conditions continue in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific. Below-average sea surface temperatures (SSTs) exist from the west coast of South America to west of the dateline. Based on the latest observations and forecasts, there is a 96% probability of maintaining La Niña conditions over the coming season.
La Niña is characterized by unusually cold temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ccean, and thus the opposite of El Niño, which is defined by unusually warm ocean temperatures in the same region.
IRI also has temperature and precipitation forecasts here.
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.
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