This briefing update was written by Elisabeth Gawthrop and Jacquelyn Turner. Read our ENSO Essentials & Impacts pages for more about El Niño and La Niña. Tony Barnston provides an overview of the briefing: What’s New Sea-surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific have cooled slightly since this time last month. The SST conditions of the Niño3.4 region, shown in tweet image […]
Last year, climate scientists from the International Research Institute for Climate and Society visited Colombia’s national meteorological service (called the Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies and known by its Spanish acronym, IDEAM) to discuss their continuing partnership and to start developing a more advanced seasonal forecasting system called ‘the Next Generation of Seasonal […]
Written by Christopher Shea, Columbia World Projects. It was originally published January 2, 2019 on Columbia World Project’s website. “I will never forget those voices and those faces sitting in front of me,” Sarah Johnson, a student at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), said over coffee at a campus café recently, as she described a meeting she had with a group of elderly […]
Read our ENSO Essentials & Impacts pages for more about El Niño and La Niña. What’s New Typically, as we near the end of a calendar year, there is relative certainty about the anticipated state of the El Niño Southern Oscillation in the coming months. At this time of year, the ENSO cycle is in a less chaotic state, and […]
The Samalá River watershed on Guatemala’s Pacific coast is a highly productive region for staple and cash crops. It’s also known for having one of the highest incidences of natural disasters in the country. Among the diverse agricultural production in the region, coffee stands as one of the most important export crops. Over the last […]
In this video, IRI’s director, Lisa Goddard, discusses two innovations IRI has helped develop to reduce the potential impacts of droughts and extreme weather on vulnerable communities around the world: climate-based index insurance for smallholder farmers in Africa and forecast-based financing for the World Food Programme. Lisa Goddard– Climate Variability, Index Insurance & Forecast-based Financing […]
Sourcing seeds. Planting at the right time. Using fertilizer. Harvesting crops. Storing food. Shipping food. Setting prices. There are a multitude of decisions made in the systems that bring food to people around the world, and many of these decisions can be better informed by climate information. With the goal of improving the security and […]
As our climate continues to change, it becomes increasingly important to consider the effects this will have around the world, especially in developing countries where many small farmers already struggle. For more than 10 years, researchers at IRI have been developing index insurance, which would provide a safety net for farmers who experience devastating climate […]
Forecasts are increasingly used to help reduce the impacts of floods in vulnerable communities. Not all floods are created equal, however. Flash floods are one of the most deadly types on a global scale. While early warning and early action systems for slow-onset floods (from rivers, for example) have improved significantly over the past 50 […]
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