Climate Services

Frontiers in the Application of High-Impact Climate Services  Pete Epanchin, USAID/W  Kevin Coffey, USAID/W  Aimee Mpambara, USAID/Rwanda  Jim Anderson, Earth Networks 1

What are climate services? • Climate Services: the development and provision of weather and climate information for decision making – This includes production, translation, transfer, and use of climate knowledge and information in policy, planning, and management

Who uses Climate Services? • Virtually everyone – – – –

General public: individuals, households Governments Non-government organizations Sector-specific users: • Agriculture, water, energy, health, emergency management, tourism, natural resource management, transportation, urban & infrastructure planning, etc.

• Climate services needs differ by sector and the type of decision maker and end user

Different climate services cover different timescales – Short-term: • Early warning systems (EWS)

– Short to Medium term: • Weekly, monthly, seasonal forecasts

– Long-term: • Planning efforts

– Example from agriculture sector: Pest outbreak mgmt, flood early warning

Short Min. of Ag, NGOs, farmers, pastoralists

Seasonal crop decisions, drought preparedness

Medium Min. of Ag, farmers, insurance companies, traders/suppliers

Irrigation investment planning, seed research

Long Min. of Ag, public works, crop research institutes, agribusiness

Costs and benefits of climate services • Timely, accurate, actionable information can benefit any number of decision makers • When done right, investments in climate services and strengthening national meteorological services are cost-effective – Can have large Benefit-Cost Ratio

• Timely and effective dissemination of climate information services is critical – Many methods: radio, SMS, TV, print, etc.

Design of a climate service • Start by understanding the problem. Can a climate service address the problem? • Climate information services must be demand driven and tailored to support users’ needs. • Baseline assessments to understand needs, capacities, & constraints. • Evaluate and monitor service performance and outcomes. • Sustain improved service delivery. • What are existing efforts? Can they be coordinated? • Share best practices and knowledge.

Sample of climate service activities • Jamaica: Seasonal Drought Forecast Service. • Barbados & Eastern Caribbean: Drought forecast, training and capacity building in regional Met Office. • Kazakhstan: Wheat production program inclusive of climate information services. • Indonesia: Drought insurance • Philippines: Capacity building of Met Office for improved quality and dissemination of user-friendly climate data & forecasts. Improved crop advisories. • Ethiopia: Integrate climate information services into programs for pastoralists • Rwanda: Climate Services to help manage risk in agriculture • Senegal: Risk management solutions including weather index insurance • Mali: Agrometeorological Advisory Program • Washington: – Climate Services for Resilient Development (CSRD) – Climate Services Partnership (CSP)

Ethiopia • SAPARM: Satellite Assisted Pastoral Resource Management – Community mapping of traditional grazing lands – Satellite data showing vegetation greeness (NDVI) – Data integration, translation, automation – Print and distribute maps every ten days

SAPARM

What are your needs? • On index card, write: – Critical gap that a climate service might address in your region. – Please include (optional): • Your name • Your mission • Interested in buying in to a mechanism that would provide support for climate services? – Yes, No, or Maybe.

Climate Services

Climate Services: Potential and Bottlenecks in Regions Most Vulnerable to Climate Change Kevin Coffey E3/GCC/Adaptation 24 February 2016

Climate Services Rainfed Economies: • Managing ups and downs • Not vulnerability, but dynamics

• Imagine the perfect climate information system

Climate Services Three Key Bottlenecks

• Observation Networks

• Products Disconnected from Decision-Making • Data Management/Analysis/Integration

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Climate Services Observation networks: Spatial

Climate Services Observation networks: Temporal

16 Source: Tufa Dinku, IRI

Climate Services Reaching Potential: Better Datasets (e.g. CHIRPS, ENACTS) Station

Satellite

Combined Source: Tufa Dinku, IRI

Climate Services Products Disconnected from Decision-Making

• Wrong scale

• Wrong time • Not tailored

• Ineffective communication strategy

Climate Services Engagement with Users

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Climate Services Data Management/Analysis/Integration Huge Knowledge Management Issues: • Decaying microfiche • Messy data (not cleaned, organized, digitized, accessible) • Poor information/data sharing for integration Analysis: Lack of capacity to conduct analysis that is responsive to needs

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Climate Services Increasing Capacity to Tailor Analysis

Climate Services

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Automated Real-Time Tools

Climate Services Conclusions

The Good • Untapped potential • Big breakthroughs The Work • Learn from what is happening • Build sustainable systems • Make sure vulnerable groups benefit 23

USAID/Rwanda • Aimee Mpambara – Climate Services for Agriculture • CCAFS, implementing partner

Global Resilience Partnership (GRP) Project in Uganda, East Africa USAID Workshop Session: The frontier of high impact climate services

Who Are We? • 20+ year old company behind the WeatherBug brand of consumer services • Provider of key observational data services to NOAA and the National Weather Service • Partner with world’s leading governmental, academic and industry organizations Offices: Washington DC New York Silicon Valley

Madrid Reps in 70+ countries

• Operate largest surface weather observation networks – Station to App • Core capabilities in sensor networking, cloud computing, and weather prediction • 180 staff: science, technology and engineering focus 26

EN Works with Least Developed Countries •

Build and operate innovative weather and lightning detection (proxy radar) networks

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Focus on severe weather monitoring, alerting, and disaster risk management

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Coverage in 22 African countries (many LDCs) with more development underway

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Anchor pilot programs with EAC, ASECNA, Guinea, and Mozambique

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Provider of extensive technical assistance via a Long Term Agreement with UNDP

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Co-lead of the team that recently won the Global Resilience Partnership Challenge

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Infrastructure and VAS partnerships with mobile network operators (MNOs) 27

EN’s Lake Victoria Pilot Project with East African Community • Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi

• East African Community (EAC) Secretariat

• Working directly with each NMHS organization

• 12 Stations covering Lake Victoria basin Alert Polygon

Proxy Radar

Rainfall Estimate

• Verification, training and capacity building

• Committed to UN to fully implement in 2015-16

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Global Resilience Partnership: Early Warning System Project in Uganda •

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From June to July 2015, the team surveyed 100+ fishermen and conducted Q-sort surveying of 120 fishermen and project stakeholders (findings presented at AMS 2016) The team proposed to GRP to address impacts of high-impact climate-related hazards on target populations on Uganda side of Lake Victoria A geographical area was chosen to include the lakeside fishing communities as well as about half of the cattle corridor The team was awarded the $1mil GRP grant in December 2015!

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Global Resilience Challenge: Partner Ecosystem Trans-African Hydro-Meteorological Observatory • •

Regional Headquarters: Nairobi, Kenya TAHMO’s mission is to get reliable, high quality surface observations out of the most challenging places by using uniquely adapted weather station technologies - now deployed in ten African Countries

Human Network International • •

Regional Headquarters: Madagascar NHI has developed a proven mobile phone platform, known as 321, which can instantly deliver messages to millions of Ugandan phones

African Centres for Lightning and Electromagnetics • •

Headquarters: Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda ACLE’s mission is to bring early detection of and protection from lightning hazards to all corners of Uganda and Africa

Climate Change Adaptation and ICT of Uganda Chartered Healthnet • •

Headquarters: Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda CHAI addresses the last mile problem: if technology delivers the necessary information to communities in danger of climate hazards

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Baseline

GRP Interve

Global Resilience Partnership: EWS Project No Spatial Relevance

Timely Timely

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• ce • •

A complete end-to-end solution: Weather information to flow from observation points all the way to GRP Intervention vulnerable agriculturalists Scalable: Millions of mobile phone owners in Uganda can have onTimely information Spatially Relevant demand access to weather and all 8 million Airtel subscribers will Spatially Relevant have free access Sustainable: Solution to continue to operate, independently of donor funding, for the foreseeable future Collaborators: Uganda National Meteorological Authority and Airtel

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Climate Challenges According to IPCC

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Where the GRP Team Adds the Most Value Mesoscale weather phenomena considerations

• To help provide fine-grain, local-level data (current conditions, hourly forecasts, storm alerts) needed to track and predict hazardous weather events, primarily thunderstorms: • high winds, heavy rains, hail, lightning strikes • flash floods, water spouts, wildfires, etc.

• To aid in environmental and business decisions where smaller space, shorter time scales are important: • Fisheries, agro-business, hydroelectric systems • Airports, military, surface mining operations

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Where the GRP Team Adds the Most Value Temporal (predictive) scale considerations Disregard

Indirectly Improve Directly Enable

Completely Automate

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Innovative Public Private Partnership to Deliver Infrastructure, Capacity and Sustainability Met Agency

Global Resilience Partnership Framework

GRP Team

Industries

•Data ownership and review/approval •Increased capacity to fully utilize the EWS •Shared data creates sustainability model

•Contractually defined data access •Development of end user services and “last mile” delivery •Cost recovery to sustain the EWS

•Purchase data and services developed by GRP team and Met Agency •Industries: Aviation, Utilities, Agriculture, Mining, Petroleum and others

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Modality of Delivery

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GRP Goals and Targets Proportion of high-quality data reported from observation network

Target: Observations every 900 km2 over target areas

Proportion of decisionmakers and the population receiving timely and actionable alerts

Target: 50% of mobile consumers notified

Amount of revenue generated through financial sustainability strategy

Target: 100% sustainable financing for system operations and maintenance in two years

Increased stakeholder adoption of safer practices in response to severe weather alerts

Target: 50% of end-users report resilient decisions based on EWS use

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Q&A

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