New CDKN reports will help developing countries plan for climate extremes
London - The Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN) today launches a three-part series of reports, “Managing Climate Extremes and Disasters: Lessons from the IPCC SREX Report” covering each of the Asia, Africa and Latin American and Caribbean regions.
The reports highlight the scientific findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation (known as ‘SREX’) for each region, and discuss the implications for society.
The SREX report itself was compiled over two and a half years, involving 220 expert authors, 19 review editors and a four-day approval process by government representatives from around the world. The final 594 page report and its 20 page summary present a rich but sobering account of how different forms of extreme weather events – ranging from high temperatures to heavy rainfall – are likely to become more common by the end of the 21st century, and are more likely to be caused by climate change.
The CDKN “Lessons from the IPCC SREX Report” series pulls out the state-of-the-art knowledge about current and future impacts of climate extremes, and options for dealing with them.
Sam Bickersteth, CDKN’s Chief Executive, said: “The SREX report is a monumental achievement, but CDKN wanted to help policy-makers, media, businesses and civil society stakeholders to navigate this huge resource. That’s why we produced these regional guides which are easy to use, but preserve the careful scientific language of the original.”
“Climate models are not sufficiently fine-tuned to give country-by-country projections for future climate extremes, but the SREX report includes important data about likely trends by sub-region” said Dr Tom Mitchell of Overseas Development Institute, CDKN’s technical lead for the project and a co-author of the IPCC SREX report.
“For example: if you live on the Tibetan Plateau in Asia, or on the West Coast of South America, the climate science tells you with a degree of confidence that your area will experience higher daily temperatures by the end of the century. We have distilled similar information on temperature and rainfall extremes region by region, to make it easy to follow.”
CDKN’s “Managing Climate Extremes and Disasters: Lessons from the IPCC SREX Reports” for Asia, Africa and Latin American and Caribbean regions are now available along with a video of Dr. Mitchell discussing the reports and one of Prof. Virginia Murray, Contributing Lead Author for the SREX report.
CDKN is collaborating with the IPCC, the Overseas Development Institute, Norway’s Climate and Pollution Agency and Norway’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs to organise a series of outreach events in Asia, Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean in April-June 2012, which will give policy-makers, media, civil society and business representatives the chance to discuss the SREX findings in person. Many of these events will be livestreamed on the CDKN website. The first event is in Havana, Cuba on 18-19 April.