Feature article

Pacific Islands Climate Data Rescue

Rod Hutchinson, Australian Bureau of Meteorology

Introduction

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (the Bureau) has started a Data Rescue project in five Pacific Island Countries (PICs) close to Australia. The project is being undertaken in partnership with New Zealand under the Australian Greenhouse Office’s Bilateral Climate Change Partnership program, and will be managed by the Bureau’s National Climate Centre.

Program objectives

The program aims to prevent loss of national heritage through the deterioration or destruction of original records, and improve the potential for within-country services (e.g, seasonal climate prediction, and mitigation of the potential effects of climate change) to support important social and economic needs, and help ensure sustainable development.

Data rescue provides an opportunity to expand essential resources for climate change research at the national, regional, and global levels, and assist in capacity building for PIC meteorological staff in effective records management and data preservation methods.

Project description

The project will focus on climate data in the Solomon Islands, Kiribati, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, and Fiji.

Important project outputs include: an inventory of records (including metadata) available in both digital and non-digital forms, both within and outside the countries; recommended actions for the preservation of the records, and prioritisation of records identified as being most at risk of loss; being measures to immediately secure vulnerable records in safe storage, subject to the availability of resources and PIC agreement to taking this action.

In providing knowledge and skills in records management, this project will provide substantial capacity building, which will help to ensure sound management of these data, and increase the likelihood of improved climate records in future years.

Project outcome

Access to additional meteorological records will lead to an enhanced understanding of the climate of the South Pacific, which exerts a very strong influence on the climate of the entire Pacific basin and beyond, through the El Niño – Southern Oscillation phenomenon, and through longer-term climate variability.

Similarly, the records will lead to an improved documentation and understanding of climate change throughout the region, and will provide the basis for further studies on impacts and adaptation strategies in the Pacific and neighbouring countries.

Efforts to assist, in practical and meaningful ways, to manage climate variability and change in the Pacific is of high importance to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.

Project management

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology will implement and manage the project, which will run for twelve months ending on 30 June 2006. This project will be driven by the needs and priorities of PICs and no data will leave their islands without their consent.

The project team has considerable expertise in records management, digital imaging, data rescue, key entry, quality control of meteorological data, and data management.

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For more details on the project, refer to the PI-CDR website

Rod Hutchinson is the Operations Manager for Climate Data Management at the National Climate Centre, Australian Bureau of Meteorology.