Outils

The Climate Wizard enables technical and non-technical audiences alike to access leading climate change information and visualize the impacts anywhere on Earth. With Climate Wizard users can: view historic temperature and rainfall maps, view state-of-the-art future predictions of temperature and rainfall, and view and download climate change maps in a few easy steps. The website is designed to be integrated within the government or other institutional websites to provide a seamless look and user experience. Developed in cooperation with CIAT.

Investment outcome

Developed through collaboration between the Nature Conservancy, the University of Washington, and the University of Southern Mississippi, the Climate Wizard enables technical and non-technical audiences alike to easily and intuitively access leading climate change information and visualize the impacts anywhere on Earth.

The challenge

There is an urgent need for climate change science to inform on-the-ground adaptation planning. There is no shortage of scientific data that has been produced about climate change, but very little of this information is relevant to on-the-ground decision making for a number of reasons including the resolution being too coarse for most risk analysis to represent local climate conditions very well, and climate change information is often focused on temperature and precipitation rather than specific sectoral impacts.

The opportunity

The Climate Wizard program can provide climate analysis services tailored to the needs of specific decision makers and institutions in Asia. Drawing on a wide range of data, this program develops products to support climate risk analysis and resilience/adaptation planning. Moreover, the website is designed to be integrated within the government or other institutional websites to provide a seamless look and user experience.

The strategy

The climate wizard provides metrics on interpreting risks within specific sector or service, such as:

• Water supply focused on total precipitation and two measures of dryness and drought conditions.
• Flood risk driven by rainfall average, measures of wet day rainfall, and short term maximum rainfall intensities.
• Human health focuses on temperature stress (hot and cold) to people: hottest and coldest single day temperature.
• Energy demand incorporates heating and cooling demand using heating and cooling degree days.
• Agro-ecosystem impacts to climate change incorporates many aspects including total precipitation, dry conditions, extreme hot and cold temperatures, and growing degree days.

Contact

For more information please contact Evan Girvetz, Senior Scientist at CIAT.