TomorrowNow.org’s Post

This week on June 17 countries around the world mobilized to mark #DesertificationandDroughtDay. #SERVIRSoutheastAsia’s (SERVIR SEA) contribution to this global effort is its “Mekong Drought and Crop Watch (MDCW)” tool that can be used to characterize droughts through accurate, reliable, and timely estimates of their severity and impacts. #United4Land. Climate change, manifested by sharp and unexpected temperature changes, dry spells, and unseasonal rainfalls, can have a severe impact on crop yields and the overall crop production, causing havoc with national food production. UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) highlights that every second, an equivalent of four football fields of healthy land becomes degraded – adding up to a total of 100 million hectares every year. The MDCW tool provides drought monitoring and forecasting and helps with developing regional and local thresholds reflecting the increasing levels of risk and vulnerability to drought. The information from this tool will allow stakeholders to plan the implementation of short and long-term mitigation measures during and in advance of droughts. Other geospatial tools use the information from the MDCW tool. For instance, the Biophysical Monitoring & Evaluation Dashboard, which was developed for Cambodia to monitor, evaluate and report on landscape improvements, also the Myanmar Landscape Monitoring Dashboard developed for monitoring the change of the landscape and rice cultivation on-the-ground for food security analyses. Check out geospatial tools introduced by SERVIR SEA: ➡ https://lnkd.in/gZTVKvEF SERVIR SEA -- a partnership between the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (ADPC) -- uses publicly available satellite technologies and geospatial data to help communities across Southeast Asia adapt to regional and transboundary climate issues and mitigate the impacts of climate change. 

🌍 I will be presenting at the AfriGEO Symposium! 🌊 I am thrilled to share that I will be speaking on a topic: Intergrated Decision Making that is critical for our region and beyond - "Global Integrated Flood and Drought Management: Mapping Flood Protection Zones and Evacuation Routes to Improve Response Capabilities." 💧 Floods and droughts pose significant challenges to communities, economies, and ecosystems. In the light of realization that we can no longer prevent these disaster entireties, I will describe how are we rethinking these calamities as a benefit and not something disastrous. How are we creating new possibilities out of Floods. By capitalizing on Data - Innovation - Water Related Disasters Nexus, we can potentially turn floods into an asset without compromising environmental sustainability. 📊🛰️ Connect with us as I discuss the vital role of geospatial data, Earth Observation, mapping, and advanced analytics in safeguarding our communities and fostering resilience. 🌐📈 APFM IDMP WMO-GWP Global Water Partnership ERICK MNYALI #YouthLedSolution #AfriGEO #FloodManagement #DroughtManagement #Resilience #GeospatialData #ClimateChange #Innovation #SymposiumSpeaker

Looking forward to participating in the Understanding Risk Global Forum next month in Himeji, Japan. The event brings together #DisasterRiskManagement (DRM) experts and practitioners from across the world with the aim of better understanding risk from #NaturalHazards for more effective action - by sharing best practices, new knowledge, innovation and collaboration. JBA's #Hydromet, #Climate and #FloodForecasting specialist Murray Dale is leading a technical session in 4 weeks time: 📅 Date: June 19, 2024, 15:15-16:15 JST (UTC+9) 🌏 Session Title: Tackling the ‘Impossible’: Long lead time flood warnings in very fast responding basins. Here's a preview of the topic Murray will be exploring: "No matter what we do, the world we live in experiences weather and climatic events that we cannot prevent. While we cannot eliminate hazards altogether, we can prepare and adapt for such events. So we need to be able to respond to them when they happen. A key tool for this response is the development and implementation of Early Warning and Flood Forecasting Systems. Technology and stakeholder engagement can help forecast for floods and alert professional responders and communities of the coming hazard. Targeted warnings can help responders and communities, allowing them to take important actions to reduce harms. Such systems are a cost-effective way of adapting to a changing climate. These systems involve developing sophisticated data and technologies to do this. But, even more importantly this work is about developing appropriate administrative and community-based methods to convey flood warning information in ways that allow actions to be taken that reduce the potential impact ahead of the flood." A great example of how we have been doing this is our work in Sierra Leone 👇 #UR24 #UR2024 #UnderstandingRisk2024 #ClimateResilience

💧💧 ❄ ❄ WORKING-GROUP ALERT -- Please share! 🏔🏔 How are #mountain water systems changing in a drying and warmer world? What are the key vulnerabilities and #resilience sources of mountain communities in the wake of #drought events, and how will they change over time? Where are the hotspots of drought risks, both in downstream and mountain regions, and what #solutions can be envisaged to address these risks? If you are interested in these questions, then you cannot miss the "Droughts in Mountain Regions" Working Group within the #HELPING decade of the IAHS - International Association of Hydrological Sciences! Link for more information: https://lnkd.in/dtAv-Bhy Link to sign up: https://lnkd.in/dNhhxu8R Mountains are the #water towers of the world, with about 25% of the global population projected to heavily rely on their runoff by #2050. A warmer and drier climate can threaten water #security and #ecosystem services worldwide, but we know little about how droughts in mountain regions can affect global water supply. To prepare ourselves for these challenges, we need that all sectors of knowledge (scientific, institutional, economical, local, and informal) are holistically leveraged! Through our global partnership, we aim at establishing “#Mountain #Living #Labs” across the world, focus groups where to circulate and upscale knowledge to study drought risk and co-design solutions! ARE YOU IN? Marit van Tiel Manuela Brunner Tessa Maurer, Ph.D. CIMA Research Foundation ARPA Valle d'Aosta European Geosciences Union (EGU) IAHS - International Association of Hydrological Sciences Mountain Research Initiative (MRI) ICIMOD Simone Gabellani Lauro Rossi Francesca Munerol Christian Massari Andrea Toreti Davide Bavera Marta Galvagno Edoardo Cremonese Michel Isabellon Roger Bales Safeeq Khan James McPhee Stefano Terzi Simon Gascoin Abror Gafurov, Dr.

🌊 With climate change, exceptional weather events are multiplying in the Benelux. Floods and droughts represent an increasing challenge in the region. In order to better protect our communities, we need to better predict and mitigate these climate extremes.     We are JCAR ATRACE, a joint cooperation programme for applied scientific research on flood and drought risk management in regional basins. Our mission is to improve transboundary cooperation on flood and drought management and research in the #Netherlands, #Belgium, #Germany and #Luxemburg.    Just like a river, we aim to gather knowledge flows to foster cooperation, transparency, and knowledge exchange. Our consortium includes 9 partners: Deltares, Delft University of Technology, RWTH Aachen University, University of Liège, KU Leuven, Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST), Helmholtz-Centre Potsdam - German Research Centre GFZ, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU Amsterdam) and University of Twente.     Together, we can navigate through extreme floods and droughts. 

EXTREME WEATHER: Biden-Harris Administration invests US$4.9m in #drought monitoring and prediction The Biden-Harris Administration has awarded US$4.9m in funding to NOAA: National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration’s labs and research partners to improve drought monitoring and prediction in the American West. #NOAA’s Climate Program Office’s Modeling, Analysis, Predictions and Projections (MAPP) program, in collaboration with the National Integrated Drought Information System (#NIDIS) program, will support seven projects that will improve the nation’s resilience against drought. The projects are funded for three years and will cover drought issues across the southwestern #USA. This research combines US$3.1m in funding from NOAA’s NIDIS program and US$1.8m from the Inflation Reduction Act to improve decision makers’ capacity to protect life, property and ecosystems in the region from #drought. “Thanks to President Biden’s Investing in America agenda and the historic Inflation Reduction Act, this investment will support NOAA and its partners in better preparing Western communities for droughts in the coming years and decades,” said US Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo. “The future of the West depends on meeting the crisis of water availability with ingenuity and resolve,” said Sarah Kapnick, PhD, NOAA chief scientist. “I’m excited to see the results of these new investments in science that will prepare managers, stakeholders and communities to anticipate, react to and manage the increasing challenges posed by the water systems critical to their lives and economies.” Read more here: https://lnkd.in/eKfpNuD9 #Meteorology #Climate #ClimateChange #Science #Weather #Data #Forecasts #Environment #Technology #MetTechExpo #MetTechExpoNA

The study of climatic variables, especially rainfall, is very important in Africa in different sectors for example agriculture, because it allows us to observe variations in rainfall over time. By exploiting these climatic data, predictions can be made or better preparation for rain-related disasters can be made such as high winds, drought or floods that cause destruction of properties and loss of life. The lack and often non-functioning of rainfall recording stations in Central Africa has driven researchers to rely on satellite data for carrying out climate studies. These satellite rainfall estimates often do not reflect the reality on the ground. The objective of this study is to evaluate the quantitative and qualitative performance of four satellite products in estimating rainfall over Central African countries (Cameroon, Congo, Gabon and Equatorial Guinea) in comparison with ERA5 reanalysis data. In this study, we compare rainfall data from different satellite products with ERA5 data at annual, monthly and daily scales over two periods (one from 1990 to 2019 and the other from 1998 to 2008) due to the unavailability of data for one satellite. The analysis of trends and spatial distributions allows us to validate #CHIRPS (Climate Hazards Center Infra Red Precipitation with Station data) as the satellite that shows most rainfall data in agreement with those of #ERA5. This result is also supported by the quantitative analysis using metrics such as correlation coefficient, percent bias, root mean square error, ratio bias, probability of detection and false alarm ratio.

Prof Marc van den Homberg is the new professor at the Princess Margriet Chair. This chair aims to make better use of knowledge on natural disasters and climate change for disaster prevention and to measure and improve the impact of humanitarian aid in the field of disaster prevention. Prof van den Homberg will focus on the topic of “Data for disaster resilience”: enhancing the quality of risk and impact data, forecasting models to predict the impact of a natural disaster to trigger anticipatory action (preparedness) and selecting, monitoring and building evidence for nature-based solutions (prevention). ℹ Read full story ⬇ #ITCfamily #utwente #Resilience #naturaldisasters #humanitarianaid #disasterprevention #disaster 510 - An Initiative of the Netherlands Red Cross Rode Kruis Nederland

🌍🚨 Leveraging data for action! FAO's DIEM Hub uses timely, detailed data to guide relief efforts in diverse disasters, enhancing the response to agricultural shocks worldwide. Discover the power of data-driven disaster response 👉 https://bit.ly/3Qu0xKK

5 things you need to know about classifying Nature-based Solutions for Disaster Risk Reduction Man-made borders cannot stop nature and natural hazards. However, nature and biodiversity are both essential in climate change mitigation and adaptation and in Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR). Successfully using Nature-based Solutions (NbS) to reduce disaster risk requires a way to classify the vast literature and make it easier to apply results. To facilitate this process, UNU-EHS researchers contributed to a paper clarifying the different types of NbS. The paper established common definitions and terminology to improve understanding across sectors, disciplines, and geographic locations. The authors analyzed 114 existing articles on NbS approaches and developed a way of grouping the different ways of using NbS to reduce disaster risk. https://bityl.co/OpA9