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Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research

Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research

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Third SEACLID/CORDEX-SEA Workshop Plans for Second Phase

3 June 2015, Manila, the Philippines — The Third Workshop of the Southeast Asia Regional Climate Downscaling SEACLID/CORDEX Southeast Asia Project successfully concluded, where members shared updates on their work progress and decided on the focuses for the upcoming Phase 2 of the Project. APN was represented by Dr. Linda Anne Stevenson, Head, Division of Communication and Scientific Affairs at the APN Secretariat.

Regional Downscaling: The Need and Challenges

High-resolution climate change scenarios, which require downscaling of GCM outputs to generate, are the basic requirement for assessing climate change impact, vulnerability and risks at local and regional levels.  That said, regional downscaling is both time-consuming and resource-absorbing, and often involves overlapping geographical domains in many countries in the region.

The Development of  SEACLID and CORDEX-SEA

Download full report:
SEACLID-CORDEX Report.pdf

To coordinate cross-border regional downscaling efforts, SEACLID (Southeast Asia Climate Downscaling Experiment) was formed in 2012 as a collaborative project involving a number of countries in Southeast Asia.

Starting as a project involving Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Viet Nam, SEACLID was recently streamlined and integrated into the Coordinated Regional climate Downscaling EXperiment (CORDEX) under WCRP and is now known as SEACLID/CORDEX Southeast Asia (CORDEX- SEA). More scientists, including from Australia, UK, Republic of Korea and Hong Kong SAR, are expected to participate in the project. APN is pleased to provide the funding support for SEACLID under the ACRP Programme through the three-year project ARCP2013-17NMY-Tangang.

SEACLID / CORDEX-SEA aims to downscale a number of CMIP5 GCMs for the Southeast Asia region through task-sharing among its members, and achieve the following results:

  • High-resolution climate change scenarios for Southeast Asia;
  • Increased capacity for young scientists in the region in regional climate modeling;
  • Enhanced science-based understanding and assessment of climate change in the region.

Presentation by APN:
SEACLID-CORDEX Linda Stevenson APN.pdf

Future Challenges and Activities

While significant progress has been made along the development path of SEACLID, a number of major challenges remain, including:

  • Lack of human resources particularly in Cambodia, Laos and Viet Nam;
  • Low operational priority, with the inability to run models continuously on a day-to-day basis;
  • Lack of infrastructure, instability of electric power, hardware failures.

A session on future activities of the group was held during the workshop, and the following activities were identified as priorities for the next phase:

  • Reach out to the Vulnerability, Impacts and Adaptation communities to promote better use of downscaled information;
  • Assist certain member countries in contributing effectively to the Project;
  • Secure funding from various sources to ensure sustainability of the Project;
  • Identify and utilise effective ways to communicate the knowledge generated to the policy-making community.