UN bodies want up to $60 billion to monitor ... everything

A recent article on Fox News reports on plans to spend at least $2.1 billion a year for the next five years — and as much as $60 billion overall during that period — to glean huge troves of still undiscovered climate information from the world's land, air and seas.

The information system aims to measure literally everything environmental, from the full amount of plant leaf material in the world's ecosystems to the differences in saltiness throughout the world's oceans to the discharge from every one of the world's major rivers, to the monitoring of water vapor and cloud distribution throughout the earth's atmosphere.

This immense store of information is urgently needed to gain a true picture of the vastly complicated climatic and environmental interactions of the planet, according to a draft version of an update report on the huge project, known as the Global Observing System for Climate, which is not expected to be finalized until April 2010. And according to the report's authors, the information to be gathered is too valuable to be left to any single nation.

As the report puts it, in typically opaque technocratic prose, the wellsprings of climate information "need to be recognized as essential public goods, where the value of global availability of data exceeds any economic or strategic value of withholding national data."

The document is specifically intended to support the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, although the report underlines that the observation system itself is not a formal U.N. body. Instead it's an effort by the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS), an obscure joint undertaking of a variety of international organizations, which does include such bodies as the United Nations Environment Program and the World Meteorological Organization, both U.N. institutions.

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Brasil: Sistema Agrodatamine permitirá visualização de cenários futuros do clima

Um conjunto de técnicas e ferramentas para auxiliar na análise e visualização de dados metereológicos e de modelos de cenários futuros de mudanças climáticas vem sendo desenvolvido.

O projeto AgroDataMine: Desenvolvimento de Métodos e Técnicas de Mineração de Dados para apoiar Pesquisas em Mudanças Climáticas com Ênfase em Agrometeorologia acaba de ser aprovado numa chamada pública do Instituto Microsoft Research e da Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (Fapesp) de pesquisas em TI .

O desafio do projeto é gerenciar um grande volume de dados meteorológicos e climáticos de até 100 anos. “As informações são da ordem de terabytes e o sistema deverá processar dados de imagens de satélites, estações metereológicas e radares, entre outros”, descreve a professora Agma.

O projeto será focado no setor agrícola, já que a atividade é das mais afetadas pelas mudanças climáticas. Segundo Agma, a ocorrência de eventos extremos, como chuvas fortes, enchentes, secas e outros fenômenos leva a grandes perdas na agricultura bem como na população que é afetada. “A capacidade de analisar o cenário que propicia tais ocorrências e a correlação de índices e medidas climáticas permite a tomada de decisões estratégicas para se prevenir em relação aos eventos extremos”, avalia a professora. Além disso, a análise de cenários futuros permitirá que agricultores, cooperativas e governo possam decidir com melhor embasamento as melhores culturas ou adaptações a serem feitas nos plantios.

O AgroDataMine já está sendo aplicado na prática. Os primeiros resultados, no entanto, serão conhecidos em um prazo de dois anos, que é a duração prevista do projeto. Para os primeiros testes, os pesquisadores analisaram cinco regiões produtoras de cana-de-açúcar.

Os dados obtidos são referentes às temperaturas, mínimas e máximas, e imagens do satélite NOAA de um período de sete anos, entre 2001 e 2008. Os primeiros resultados indicam, por exemplo, que existe uma correlação entre a precipitação e o índice de vegetação obtido por meio das imagens de satélite, com uma defasagem de 2 meses. Isso significa que após 2 meses da ocorrência de muita chuva ou secas é que se observa um reflexo desse fenômeno na planta. Com isso, é possível utilizar as técnicas que estão sendo desenvolvidas pela equipe do projeto para encontrar correlações entre as diversas variáveis e definir modelos de previsão. “Esses novos métodos podem auxiliar os agrometeorologistas e fornecer informações aos agricultores ajudando-os na tomada de decisão”, revela a professora.

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How the Internet enables farmers to comprehend climate

Climate information access by farmers is insufficient because their access hasn't been optimized. That is the result of a collaborative study by Australian researchers on climate change and its effects on farmers with small fields in Indonesia.

"Compared to Australia's farmers, the effects of climate change are similar, mainly draughts. However there is a significant difference, which is that Australian farmers can access weather forecast information through the internet," said Catherine Tulloh, a climate change researcher from Australia Bureau of Agriculture and Resource Economics (ABARE).

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Technology helps deliver weather information fast

Technology is changing the way weather information - past, present and future - is captured and delivered. At South Dakota State University, climatologist Dennis Todey says today's communication tools - especially computers and the Internet - helped bring about these many changes.

As the Internet has become mainstream, scientists and the public have worked together to gather and share weather information to hone in on as small as a two- or three-mile radius region.

Farmers and ranchers use wind speeds, temperatures, precipitation and more data to make wise management decisions. Scientists also use that same information to determine warming and cooling trends.

“Climate is becoming so much more of an interest now,” Todey said. “I think you're going to see additional weather-related products that serve agriculture and will help people in their ability to produce.”

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Transmitirán precios de los alimentos en Honduras vía celular

Un artículo del Heraldo informa que A un costo de 31.97 lempiras al mes, los productores podrán recibir vía celular el precio diario del café, de los vegetales y del maíz producido por más de 260,000 agricultores diseminados en todo el país.

La Fundación para el Desarrollo Empresarial Rural (Funder) y el Proyecto Pymerural, auspiciado por la Cooperación Suiza, lanzaron recientemente el Sistema de Información de Precios vía celular (AGROCEL) mediante el cual los productores recibirán información diaria de precios y de la condición climática en el país.

Funder identificó a unos 260,000 productores que podrían participar en este sistema, de los cuales 150 mil cultivan maíz; más de 100,000 café y 10,000 agricultores producen vegetales.

Con este sistema, el productor conocerá las cotizaciones para su producto de interés. Esta herramienta le proporcionará un margen de referencia para negociar la venta de su producción a precios competitivos. También tendrá acceso a proveedores y precios de ciertos insumos, condiciones meteorológicas con alertas por fenómenos extremos, consejos para el cuidado de cultivos, información sobre capacitaciones y respecto al desarrollo de ferias. Bonilla expresó que la sostenibilidad y crecimiento económico de los pequeños y medianos productores agrícolas hondureños se dificulta por el limitado o nulo acceso a servicios de información que contribuyen a la toma de decisiones al momento de comercializar su cosecha.

La referida necesidad sirvió de base para implementar este sistema, especialmente ahora que las Tecnologías de Comunicación e Información (TIC), a través de la telefonía móvil, permite a los agricultores obtener información de sus productos en el mercado nacional aunque estén en zonas remotas, dijo Bonilla.

Funder y Pymerural seleccionaron los rubros de hortalizas, café y granos básicos, para desarrollar la fase piloto de este proyecto y así generar experiencias que en un futuro permitan integrar nuevos productos a esta plataforma de la información.

Conferencia Mundial examina el papel vital de la información y la predicción del clima

La agricultura representa el principal medio de subsistencia para el 70 por ciento de los pobres del mundo. Muchos de ellos son pequeños agricultores, ganaderos y pescadores, así como habitantes de los bosques, incluyendo grupos indígenas que viven en zonas sensibles al clima y son especialmente vulnerables a sus variaciones.

"El coste económico asociado a los desastres naturales, incluyendo los fenómenos climáticos extremos, se ha multiplicado por 14 en la agricultura desde la década de 1950", advirtió Alexander Mueller, Director General Adjunto para Recursos Naturales de la FAO, al intervenir durante la Tercera Conferencia Mundial sobre el Clima (CMC-3) que tiene lugar esta semana en Ginebra.

El objetivo de la Conferencia es establecer un marco internacional para guiar el desarrollo de los servicios climáticos y enlazar las predicciones y la información sobre el clima de base científica con la gestión de riesgos y la adaptación a las variaciones climáticas.

Numerosos casos de estudio han demostrado los beneficios de estrategias de adaptación localizadas, condicionadas por información climática fiable, para mejorar la producción de alimentos, los ingresos de los campesinos y la seguridad alimentaria, según Mueller.

Lea nota oficial de prensa FAO.

Visite además: Portal de FAO sobre Cambio Climático

Philippines: Farmers call for better dissemination of weather information

An article in the Business Mirror reports on a paper from the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS).

The paper recommends better strategies for disseminating information on climate and the weather and the construction of small-scale irrigation systems as strategies that can be undertaken by concerned government agencies to enable rice and corn farmers to cope with climate change.

“There is still a wide array of applicable tools that could help agricultural workers mitigate environmental challenges and decide intelligently in the face of seasonal uncertainties ...most important to consider in any development effort is the fit of the intervention on the needs and situations of the target population,” it said.

PIDS researchers noted that among the most pressing concerns aired by farmers is the absence of localized climate/weather forecasts. “Farmers really need to be provided with specific localized meteorological service if they are truly to gain the edge in the battle against seasonal climate variability. Another challenge is the lack of time-series data that can be used for developing forecasting models. There are no meteorological stations in all of the municipalities, It also noted existing meteorological stations which are relatively new or less than 50 years old do not have data long enough to establish significant patterns.

Aside from television and radio, the paper said government agencies could consider publishing print materials in layman form and written in the local dialect to disseminate weather and climate information.“An insured, well-informed and well-funded farmer has a better chance of surviving the challenges offered by seasonal climate variability,” said the PIDS researchers.

Weather info for all: Mobile communications to revolutionize African weather monitoring

The Global Humanitarian Forum and its President, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, together with Ericsson, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), mobile telecommunications company Zain, and the Earth Institute at Columbia University, today announced a major initiative, dubbed "Weather Info for All", to radically improve Africa's weather monitoring network in the face of the growing impact of climate change. The partnership will deploy up to 5,000 automatic weather stations in mobile network sites accross Africa, where less than 300 are reporting today.

Approximately 70 percent of Africans rely on farming for their livelihood, or close to 700 million people, and over 95 percent of Africa's agriculture depends on rainfall. Changing weather patterns due to climate change render obsolete traditional knowledge relating to agriculture otherwise reliable for centuries, creating a great need for meteorological information. This partnership will also increase information via mobile phones to users and communities, including remote farmers and fishermen.

Michel Jarraud, Secretary-General of the WMO said: "For food production, almost every decision is linked to weather, climate and water parameters. We see the Weather Info for All initiative as a major pan-African effort to empower our 188 Members to provide enhanced weather information and services".

First 19 stations deployed more than double Lake Victoria region weather monitoring, where 5,000 people die every due to storms and accidents. The initiative will have an impact far beyond agriculture and disaster preparation as it also includes assistance to national meteorological services in training and technical capacities. Better weather information will also make possible the development of services, such as microinsurance, which can be based on weather data indexes, such as rainfall. The initiative will also increase the volume of information useful for scientists, as well as for the water, transport and energy industries.

While the weather information gap is particularly acute in Africa, the initiative would be open to later expansion into other affected regions.

A further partner in the initiative is Columbia University's Earth Institute, headed by Jeffrey Sachs. To help with distribution to some of the most vulnerable and poorest parts of Africa and in partnership with the Earth Institute, automatic weather stations will also be installed in Millennium Villages - rural development projects spread throughout 10 countries and focused on achieving the Millennium Development Goals. By leveraging the expertise of Earth Institute scientists on climatology, agriculture, and health, the project hopes to identify key areas where there can be an immediate impact contributing a sizable knowledge bank to the effort.

"The Earth Institute is a proud partner in this highly innovative program," said Jeffrey Sachs, director of the institute. "Once the switch is turned on, a flow of extensive weather data will become available throughout Africa, with benefits extending from the national policy makers to the smallholder farmers. The Millennium Villages is a perfect launch site for the practical and timely application of weather data to bolster resilience and sustainable development in sub-Saharan Africa."

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Also: Weathering storms with telecoms

Ministerio de Agricultura Chileno fortalece red agroclimática

Con recursos del Fondo de Innovación para la Competitividad (FIC), se ampliará la cobertura en 12 regiones del país, ofreciendo información meteorológica y pronósticos de eventos biológicos que permitirán al sector agrícola un mejor manejo de sus cultivos.

Las nuevas estaciones capturan y entregan datos de velocidad y dirección de viento, radiación solar y presión atmosférica y permitirán, a sus usuarios, acceder a modelos predictivos de fenología de cultivos, plagas y enfermedades, validados para las distintas zonas de Chile.

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Además: Meteorología en tiempo real - potente herramienta del agro