Mechanisms for pooling and sharing data
(or How to get IPCC an GEOSS working together
on this?)
Jose A. Marengo
INPE, Brazil
TGICA Co-Chair
with the help of Bob Chen and Richard Moss
Objective of the workshop: IPCC and GEOSS interaction
To provide guidance on how the Global Earth Observation System of
Systems (GEOSS) can improve the delivery of multi-disciplinary data
and data products to the climate impacts, adaptation and vulnerability
(IAV) research community, whose work is assessed by the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC )
In part because it is so multi-disciplinary, the climate impacts,
adaptation and vulnerability (IAV) community experiences gaps in the
availability of observations data and information. It could use
additional support in accessing Earth observation data and
information.
This workshop will therefore explore the potential of the Global
Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) to improve and
accelerate access by this research community to a broad range of
relevant information, relevant for the IPCC AR5 process.
TGICA and DDC:
The Task Group on Data and Scenario Support for Impact and Climate
Analysis (TGICA) from IPCC facilitates distribution and application of
climate change related data and scenarios
The TGICA oversees a IPCC Data Distribution Centre (DDC) which
provides data sets, scenarios of climate change and other
environmental and socio-economic conditions, and other materials
(e.g., technical guidelines on the use of scenarios).
The TGICA contributes to building capacity in the use of data and
scenarios for climate-related research in developing and transitioneconomy regions and countries. The TGICA also convenes expert
meetings on an as needed basis. TGICA and DDC have limited resources
and that we are interested in partnering with organizations that might
be able to extend our resources.
http://www.ipcc-data.org/
- Climate observations, as global mean time series and gridded fields,
Climate model projections and simulations: Monthly means and
climatologies (decadal and 30-year means),
-Socio-economic data,
-Environmental data and Scenarios,
-Guidelines and other supporting material.
The identification, selection, and application of baseline and scenario
data are crucial steps in the assessments of the potential impacts of
future climate change. The need to provide a consistent collection of
data covering a great diversity of different scenario elements can pose
substantial challenges to researchers. The IPCC DDC seeks to provide
access to such a collection of data and scenarios and to offer guidance
on their application.
http://www.ipcc-data.org/
Who runs the DDC?
The DDC is a shared operation :
-The British Atmospheric Data Centre (BADC) in the United Kingdom; the World Data Center
Climate at the Max-Planck-Institute for Meteorology (WDCC / MPI-M) in Hamburg, Germany
for climatic data;
-The Socioeconomic Data and Applications Center (SEDAC) operated by the Center for
International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) at Columbia University, New York,
USA. for socio economic data
-Each of these institutions has voluntarily taken on responsibility for managing access to a
subset of the data and information provided by the DDC.
The DDC is advised and guided by the IPCC -TGICA, co-chaired by Dr. Richard Moss and Dr.
Jose Marengo. Both the DDC and the TGICA are supported by the IPCC Technical Support Units
of Working Group I, Working Group II, and Working Group III, through whom they are
accountable to the IPCC.
Given the
• Needs of AR5, IAV research, and key users
• Within TGICA capacity (DDC and TGICA members)
• A realistic planning horizon (??)
– TGICA will be focusing in the near term on responding to a few
specific tasks that have been put on its agenda at the WG 2 LA
meeting; and that in the longer term, we are interested in a
broader set of issues to improve and support use of
observations and scenarios in research on responses to climate
change.
• Mandate
– Agreed areas of work (anthropogenic influences, climate
observations, climate projections, other factors relevant to IAV)
– Activities (DDC, guidelines, capacity building, expert meetings)
How can the TGICA IPCC fill in the gaps to address
the following questions, and where GEOSS data
can be very helpful?
• What data sets/approaches are available for use? How can these
be applied?
• What additional data are needed for AR5?
• Are there any large regional gaps?
• How to select a new set of representative factors to associate
with RCPs-(Representative Concentration Pathwaysnew IPCC
AR5 emission scenarios) ?
• How to support the use of new data in the development of new
scenarios and model validation?
• How to integrate all the different data streams much more
effectively?
• How do the scientific community, stake holders and the IAV
community take advantage of the IPCC GEOSS interaction?
Moss et al (2010)
Scenarios are generated and used by three broad types of models and analytic frameworks
in climate change research: integrated assessment models, climate models, and models and
other approaches used to help assess IAV models, data for validation and attribution
studies
Flood in Amazonia 2009 (IRD, Amazon level measured at Manaus (Brazil) by tide
gauges (green curve) and by Topex/Poseidon and JasonCPRM-Manaus, UFRJ)
2 in red dots
Drought
2005
Flood
2009
In July 2009, the levels of the Rio Negro at
Manaus harbor reached e new record level of
29.75 m for the 107 years of stage data
available (Marengo et al 2011)
Current situation:
For the GEO community, a key question is how can data from GEOSS
be made more useful for the IPCC assessment process (and in any
climate/global change study), both in the short and long term.
From the IPCC, side is data quality and documentation, continuity and
consistency of measurements.
From the TGICA IPCC DDC viewpoint, a key question would be how
satellite and other spatial data from GEOSS can help support
monitoring of impacts and adaptation, e.g., changes in land use, sea
level, settlement patterns, ecosystem health.
How could such monitoring better support IAV assessments both at
the global and regional levels (needed both for IPCC work or for
global change studies and international negotiations).
Current situation:
GEOSS is envisioned as the data system of systems designed to facilitate
access to data from all of the space agencies around the world and lots
of other environmental and related observing networks and resources.
It could also provide value-added services for data, including improving
continuity of parameters (across missions), a forum for prioritizing new
instruments and measurements, a platform for linking national spatial
data infrastructures, etc.
GEOSS aims to support not just science but a range of societal benefit
areas and decision making--which is partly why it is interested in
talking with the IPCC community  IAV and IPCC AR5 process.
GEOSS data and IPCC requirements on data availability, continuity
and quality
The GEO principles call for full and open access
Quantities and varieties of data much larger than anything in the
IPCC.
Many organizations, including scientific institutions and individual
scientists, do not come close to supporting full and open access, so
GEOSS does represent significant progress
For example, one of the major points in the implementation
guidelines is the right to redistribute data, so that end users aren't
forced to go back to the original source for data and recreate valueadded analysis that others may have already performed.
GEOSS data for IVA climate/global change related aspects and for
IPCC AR5
The main point here is to articulate how wider, longer-term access
to remote sensing and other data coming out of present and future
missions could be harnessed in a more systematic way to support
IPCC and national/regional scale decision making, e.g., in
relationship to international agreements (e.g., protecting forests)
and conventions (climate change, desertification and biodiversity),
monitoring impacts, quantifying damages, and coordinating
adaptation and response activities across countries and regions.
GEOSS could provide a framework for rapid and transparent
intercomparison of measurements coming from different platforms,
for flexible integration of different data types to support analysis and
prediction, for monitoring and detection of environmental changes
and related impacts, for improving attribution efforts, and for
strengthening local capacity to use data in mitigation, adaptation,
and early warning.
There isn't an IPCC-wide policy on data accessibility,
documentation, etc. other than data in the DDC, which is only a
small portion of all of the data utilized in the IPCC assessment
reports.
Flexible access to GEOSS data is certainly a key ingredient needed
for any of this to become a reality.
Full and open access (any restriction?) vs free access
Publications (scientific journals and non standard publication )
referred in the IPCC process
Conclusions
This workshop could also help initiate greater efforts to get the
broader IPCC community to share their data in an effective manner,
taking advantage of GEOSS
This could help increase the transparency of the IPCC process.
It might also spur efforts to get people who publish peer-reviewed
papers referred to in IPCC reports to also make their underlying data
more available.
Need to define the activities of the GEOSS and IPCC communities that
might overlap in terms of data sharing and access.
If some remote sensing data is being used both in IPCC-related
research and in societal applications. Are there synergies in linking the
users, systems, etc.?