World Bank. Washington, Nov. 23, 2011-How much will temperatures rise
in 30, 40, or 50 years? How could changing weather affect rain-fed crops in the
Horn of Africa, or winter flooding and summer droughts in Uzbekistan? And what
should countries do to prepare for more intense droughts and storms?
These are the kinds of questions the World Bank hopes to answer with a new
initiative to expand access to climate data and spark innovation in the fight
against climate change around the world.
A new Climate Change
Knowledge Portal, launched today, includes visualization tools depicting
temperature and rainfall scenarios to the year 2100. It links users to more than
250 climate indicators, and includes risk profiles for 31 countries where
climate open data websites may launch in the next year.
In addition, a three-month competition – Apps for Climate – will kick off in
December at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Durban, South
Africa. Modeled after the Bank’s 2010 Apps for Development
challenge, the competition will encourage scientists, software developers, and
others to create applications that use the wealth of climate data being made
available to help solve the development problems that climate change poses.
The portal, competition, and data are the latest additions to the World
Bank’s Open Data Initiative. They’re
part of a new effort to make climate data more accessible and useful, and also
complement a push for the practical application of climate change research
driven by the Green Growth
Knowledge Platform, a global network of researchers and development
experts.
Making data available is one of the crucial steps toward building resilience
to climate change.
—Saroj Jha, GFDRR Manager
"Development solutions have their foundation in access to data, analysis and
knowledge," said World Bank Group President Robert B. Zoellick. "This new
initiative will put critical climate facts at the fingertips of policy makers,
researchers, and development practitioners so the public and governments can
debate and determine policies with better information about climate
effects."
Adds World Bank Climate Change Envoy Andrew Steer: "This Climate Change
Knowledge Portal enables ministers, development institutions, and
non-governmental organizations in developing countries to see within minutes
what’s going to happen 30 or 40 years from now, based on the best scientific
modeling that exists in the world. It’s a great tool for opening up discussion
on the issues."
Opening Climate Data ‘Increasingly Critical’
In the past, a wealth of raw data on climate has been under-used, often
ending up as static PDFs or on specialists’ hard drives. The new Climate Portal
aims to make it easier to access and use climate information from various
sources, including the Bank’s open data catalogue.
"Opening climate data will encourage experts and innovators, wherever they
may be, to come up with new tools for analyzing and managing the effects of
climate change,” says Shaida Badiee, director of the Bank’s Development Data
Group. “The combination of open data and innovative tools will be an excellent
resource for countries as they develop plans for adapting to climate
change."
The portal allows users to query, map, compare, chart and summarize climate
and climate-related information, as well as to visualize the effects of changing
patterns of rainfall and temperature. It aids government ministries and World
Bank teams in 130 countries where adapting to climate change is a development
priority.
Modeling Risk in Mozambique
The Global Facility for Disaster
Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR), a partner of the Climate Portal, is
supporting this effort through its Open Data for Resilience
Initiative in 31 countries. GFDRR and government ministries are conducting
disaster risk analyses, creating climate data websites, and developing
applications to model risk.
"Making data available is one of the crucial steps toward building resilience
to climate change," says GFDRR Manager Saroj Jha. "Open data enables countries
to develop the kinds of counter measures needed to deal with extreme events and
which must be at the core of every country’s policy and planning."
GFDRR expects 15 countries will have climate open data websites by May, and
possibly 31 will have them by the end of 2012. Mozambique is likely to be first.
The country already suffers from droughts, cyclones and coastal flooding, and is
worried about projections that rainfall will decrease during the primary growing
season.
Mozambique is one of many countries in the world facing such challenges.
Mozambique’s disaster management agency and GFDRR are in the midst of building
“climate decision” tools targeted to Mozambique’s needs, but which could be made
freely available to other countries once they are developed, says Robert Soden
of GFDRR’s technical Labs group.
One beneficiary could be the Horn of Africa, where the World Bank has
committed $1.88 billion to help the region cope with severe drought and build
drought resilience. The Bank, with GFDRR and other partners in the effort,
including Google, the World Food Program, and the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration (NASA), met earlier this month to discuss sharing data. A new Horn of Africa data website will be accessible
through the Climate Change Knowledge Portal and the Open Data
site.
"Because there is so much unknown and there is so much data out there, it’s
going to be really important that the data is accessible," said Jason Kessler of
NASA. "To be able to really meaningfully study and understand what’s going on,
it’s going to require as much information as people can get their hands on."
"The Climate Change Knowledge Portal is a one-stop shop and will be an
invaluable tool both for the Bank team and developing countries alike," says
Marianne Fay, chief economist in the Bank’s Sustainable Development Network.
"The portal provides an ideal web-based platform to assist in knowledge
development, planning and knowledge sharing for green development and resilience
to climate change."
