Commonwealth Climate Services demonstrator
Commonwealth Climate Services demonstrator
The Commonwealth Climate Services Demonstrator is a trial project that is pulling through existing Met Office capability to have additional benefit to Commonwealth nations.
At the Commonwealth Heads of Government (CHOGM) meeting in London in April 2018, the UK universities Minister announced the development of the Commonwealth Climate Services Demonstrator, led by the Met Office, a world leading authority on climate science and climate services. Climate services are the provision of climate information to help decision-making.
Over the two years of the UK’s chairmanship of the Commonwealth Secretariat, the climate services demonstrator project will bring countries together to generate and use vital information to improve resilience to climate change. This project will build a network of climate services that are currently being developed in collaboration with commonwealth countries.
The project is trialing the application of Met Office Hadley Centre Climate Programme (MOHCCP) outputs around the globe, including applying the new global climate model projections and Sea Level Rise estimates. The trial services will include sea level rise estimates, data provision, e-learning and capacity building focusing on long-term climate change in the focus regions.
The core component of the demonstrator will focus on Commonwealth small island states in the Pacific and Caribbean. These states are some of the most at risk from climate change due to their small geographical area, isolation and exposure. Twenty-five Small Island States are members of the Commonwealth.
The Commonwealth climate service demonstrator will seek to:
- explore and demonstrate the potential application of applying existing outputs from the Met Office Hadley Centre to support climate change adaptation in the Commonwealth;
- work collaboratively to create new scientific links between Commonwealth countries in co-producing new climate services; and
- curate and promote the applications of a range of climate services that have benefit when applied to commonwealth nations.
Our ambition is to demonstrate a service that draws on existing engagement with decision-makers and combines the climate science and modelling capabilities of the Met Office Hadley Centre and Commonwealth partner organisations. This will complement an existing portfolio of Met Office initiates, which deliver climate services for the benefit of the wider Commonwealth.
Climate change in the Caribbean - 2019 workshop