ACRE SEA Workshop

ACRE Southeast Asia Workshop 27-8 May, Puri Pujangga, National University of Malaysia (UKM), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Report on the Asia Pacific Network for Global Change CAPaBLE scheme funded workshop under:

APN Project Code: CBA2012-FP03-D’Arrigo

Project Title: Atmospheric Circulation Reconstruction for the Earth (ACRE) SE Asia – towards new weather and climate baselines for assessing weather and climate extremes, impacts and risks over SE Asia.

The ACRE Southeast Asia workshop was linked with KNMI-BMKG's International ASEAN SACA&D Conference:

International ASEAN SACA&D Conference and Workshop 2014 (IASCW-2014) 

Past, Present and Future; a display of climate science and services in South East Asia

20 ~ 23 MAY 2014 

Indonesia Regional Training Center 

Citeko, Bogor, Indonesia 

The Workshop Background

Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research CAPaBLE grant funding is supporting an Atmospheric Circulation Reconstructions over the Earth (ACRE) (http://www.met-acre.org/) regional focus workshop to launch ACRE Southeast Asia at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM). It is a Joint Workshop with the KNMI-BMKG Digitisasi Data Historis (DiDaH) project (http://www.didah.org/) and benefits from scientific expertise from the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) CCl/CLIVAR/JCOMM Expert Team on Climate Change Detection and Indices (ETCCDI).

Joint Workshop Aims and Objectives: To

1) Engage a wide range of researchers across Southeast Asia with ACRE’s goal of recovering long term observational data  

2) Provide the basis for training in data rescue, scanning and digitisation tools and techniques for historical and documentary weather observations from regional archives. 3) Encourage open data sharing between National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHS)

4) Provide the basis for the climate applications community (eg. water, agricultural, environmental sectors) and policy makers across the region to access and utilise the new high resolution databases and reanalysis outputs developed by the project.

Expected Outcomes

•       Awareness of the significance and uses of historical, documentary and palaeoclimatic data, and how the process of imaging and digitisation will not only preserve an invaluable, fragile and endangered resource, but enable these data to be accessible and usable, both regionally and internationally.  

•        Closer collaboration with users/policymakers/applications specialists and organisations with similar interests across the region 

•       A new, longer data series, spatial weather reconstructions and reanalysis baselines, allowing current and future projections of weather and climate extremes and risks (typhoons, heat waves, heavy precipitation, storms, droughts, etc.), and their socio economic impacts to be analysed and assessed in a longer historical context. 

•       To extend, expand and utilise the Southeast Asian Climate Assessment and Dataset (SACA&D) (http://saca-bmkg.knmi.nl/) portal as a major weather and climate data platform/portal for wider access to the new baselines 

Workshop Speakers and Papers in order of appearance:

Day ONE

Panel 1: The ACRE Initiative, Regional Reports and Data Rescue Initiatives

Chair: Gerard Van De Schrier (KNMI)

Rob Allan: ‘The ACRE Initiative: An Overview’

Fiona Williamson: ‘ACRE Southeast Asia’ 

Guoyu Ren: ‘ACRE-China and observational studies of East Asian climate change’. 

Drew Lorrey (SKYPE): ‘ACRE Pacific contributions to the ISPD - progress, future work and prospects for reanalysis without radiosondes applications'

Fredolin Tangang: "The Southeast Asia Regional Climate Downscaling (SEACLID)/CORDEX Southeast Asia".

Panel 2: Using Historical Sources for the Study of Climate and Natural Disaster

Chair: Philip Brohan

Clive Wilkinson: ‘Historical Data Recovery in the Southern Indian Ocean and Western Pacific’

James Warren: Murdoch-‘Philippine Typhoons, Sources and the Historian’.

Ms. Nantaka Pollachai (National Archives of Thailand): ‘National Archives of Thailand: Historical records of Rainfall for Rice Cultivation and Flood Disaster in Thailand during 1768 – 1942’

Bob Wasson: ‘Extreme Floods and Climate over the Past Millennium: Thailand, India and Northern Australia’. 

Adam Switzer: ‘Assessing natural hazards at multi-century timescales’

Panel 3: Current projects and historic research

Chair: Richard Gartner

Johnny Chan: Variations of Typhoon Activity in the Western North Pacific for the Last 500 Years’

Tony Reid: 'Were the tectonic mega-events of Indonesia's 20th Century misleadingly mild?'

Mukund Palat Rao (LDEO): ‘Tree-ring Results from Southeast Asia: Myanmar and Vicinity’.

Gerard Van Der Schrier: ‘Climatology, Variability and Changes in the onset of the rainy season in South East Asia’

Khin Win Maw: ‘Climate Change Indices for Mandalay’

DAY TWO

 Panel 1: Regional data: Sources, Availability and Research 

Chair: Bob Wasson

Lee Shao Yi: ‘Decadal Trends over the Maritime Continent as seen in Different Reanalyses’

Boonlert Archevarahuprok: Past, Present and Future Climate in Thailand

Ardhasena Sopaheluwakan: "Characterization of long term historical rainfall

data using copulas"

Nurizana Amir Aziz: ‘In-House Malaysian Historic Meteorological Data’

Mahani binti Muhammad: ‘Pre 1950s records pertaining to temperature, weather data and other related subjects held at the National Archives of Malaysia’

Panel 2: Regional data: Sources, Availability and Research

Chair: Clive Wilkinson 

Jun Matsumoto: ‘‘Climatic data rescue in Southeast Asia’.

Mr Tran Dinh Trong: ‘Meteorological Data before 1954 in Vietnam: Storage and Digitisation’. 

Nobuhiko Endo: Historical data in French Indochina and variations in precipitation characteristics during boreal autumn in central Vietnam over the 20thcentury.

Li Kin Wai: ‘Historical Data Rescue and Recovery at the Hong Kong Observatory’.

Kwon Won-Tae: ‘Climate data management and analysis since the beginning of instrumental observation in Korea’.

Samuel Bacon: ‘Meteorological data rescue in Timor-Leste and challenges for the future’

Panel 3: Applications and Outputs 

Chair: Muru Loganathan 

Richard Gartner: ‘The Digital Humanities Context: Curation and Interoperability’. 

Gerard Van Der Schrier on behalf of Ayran Van Engelen: ‘ICA&D: The International Climate Assessment & Dataset – Data Rescue’

Urip Haryoko: “Data Rescue and Integration for Supporting Climate Services in Indonesia”.

Philip Brohan: ‘Old Weather: Citizen Science for Climate Reconstruction’

Actual Workshop Outcomes:

•       Raised awareness of the significance and uses of historical, documentary and palaeoclimatic data in tracking long-term climate change through modelling and reanalysis, but also how historians, geographers and archivists can work together to utilise and preserve an invaluable, fragile and endangered resource, and enable these data to be accessible and usable, both regionally and internationally.  

•        Facilitated closer collaboration with users and organisations with similar interests across the region, especially in the form of proposed publications and future collaborative funding bids.

•       Discussed sources for a longer data series than currently exists, whereby current and future projections of weather and climate extremes and risks (typhoons, heat waves, heavy precipitation, storms, droughts, etc.), and their socio economic impacts can be analysed and assessed in a longer historical context. 

•       Confirmed the use of the Southeast Asian Climate Assessment and Dataset (SACA&D) (http://saca-bmkg.knmi.nl/) portal as a major weather and climate data platform/portal that is freely accessible to users globally. 

Agreed:

•       An effort needs to be made by the steering committee to raise the awareness of governments and decision makers on the importance of data rescue efforts for sustainable development and adaptation to climate change and variability, especially to attain the buy-in of said decision makers on funding applications; and to consider the impact of national data policies and agreed data sharing arrangements on the rescue and recovery of archival/historic terrestrial and marine climate data 

•       To look further into the use of I-DARE as a data repository, as well as SACA&D. 

•       To set up a Steering Committee for ACRE Southeast Asia. Membership to be: Rob Allan (UK Hadley Centre), Fiona Williamson (UKM), Johnny Chan (CityUHK), Adam Switzer (EOS), Bob Wasson (NUS), Urip Haryoko (BMKG) and Richard Gartner (KING’s) as advisor on Digital Databases and project working. 

•       Steering committee to submit an article following on from the workshop by 31 August 2014 to Geoscience Letters Journal.

•       Steering Committee to abstract a summary document from the article to be used as an ACRE SEA outline and policy document. Said document to be used as an official statement for approaching policy makers. 

•       Steering Committee to actively seek funding streams for a collaborative project based on the theme of Cultures of Disaster. The focus should have a wide sciences and humanities appeal and focus on decades on particular climate instability i.e. 1830s and 1890s to links events and places. 

•       For all participants to be on the look out for funding streams from the ASEAN region. Esp. World Bank, Future Earth.

•       All participants to work on improving and contributing to current climate databases for the region and to agree to data sharing initiatives. At the most basic level, sources of data can be shared i.e titles/regions, extent (like a database of archival finding aids, if not actual data itself). Richard Gartner and Mahani binti Muhammad (Arkib Negara) to advise on how best to manage this database. 

 For workshop presentations, go to:

 https://www.dropbox.com/sh/accypzhv4393tik/AAB55aX4ED4cje0NrUHI3O5Xa

For workshop pictures, go to:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/wjuuehhuojrri8l/AABm9qJYwgw0SV5dOtAzBkgRa