The Global Framework for Climate Services will provide early warnings of extreme weather and promote data exchange between scientists and governments. Forewarned and thus forearmed, farmers, water managers, city and coastal planners, national legislators, municipalities and so on will thus have time to plan ahead. If a prolonged drought is predicted, for example, a farmer will know not to plant water-thirsty crops.

Whereas weather forecasts tend to be reliable for up to seven days, climate forecasts will ultimately be looking months or even decades ahead. It is hoped that, within a couple of years, there will be a framework for delivering these climate services in a coordinated way, to make sure a broad range of stakeholders in developed and developing countries have rapid access to this information.

UNESCO organized two fora in Geneva, one on gender and climate and the other on capacity-building, education and training. ‘Capacity-building through education and science’ was retained as a key element of the Global Framework for Generating Climate Services.

UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) helped to prepare the session on meeting the information needs of coastal populations. The experts pointed out that ocean observations were the backbone of any climate service and that the provision of climate services would thus be dependent on having a comprehensive, perennial Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS). Coordinated by the UNESCO-IOC, GOOS feeds information and data to the Global Climate Observing System.

The side event on groundwater and climate organized by UNESCO’s Division of Water Sciences underscored that groundwater would play a major role in society’s ability to adapt to future change, particularly in the light of an increasing number of extreme weather events, such as floods and droughts. Despite this, groundwater is not well represented in global climate models at present. This is partly due to the difficulty in assessing groundwater resources and the scarcity of data, and partly to a lack of recognition that groundwater is part of the hydrological cycle and thus part of the global climate system.

Whereas the Geneva conference focused on climate services as a way of helping countries to adapt to climate change, the UN-sponsored climate talks in Copenhagen in December will be thrashing out a deal between developing and industrialized countries to reduce global carbon emissions.

The first World Climate Conference in 1979 launched the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the World Climate Research Programme. The second in 1993 led to the adoption of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Global Climate Observing System.

Related links:
::  WCC3