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For long-term climate changes and trends, data on climate parameters and future thresholds can be Module
derived from climate change scenarios. However, considering that most scenarios are global or regional
in scope, they are of limited use for national level analyses. In the same vein, the timescales used in
these scenarios (50 to 100 years) are not appropriate for the decision-making process (which needs

to address urgent and immediate needs on a 10 to 20 year timescale). See, for example: IPCC Data
Distribution Centre, http://www.ipcc-data.org; IPCC Reports http://www.ipcc.ch/ipccreports/index.htm.

Given the often limited data, groups are recommended to focus on using historical and observed

climate data and trends to construct good climate data series. If groups decide to use scenarios in the
course of this exercise, it is recommended that they select simple rather than complex ones. With Abu Dhabi, UAE
respect to GCMs, one must always examine the accuracy of the results obtained for the study region
and the parameters used. Techniques exist to transform information from a global scale, to a regional
and then national one. See, for example: Vulnerability Network & Observatory, http://vulnerabilitynet.
org or Assessments of Impacts and Adaptation to Climate Change in Multiple Regions and Sectors

Project, http://www.aiaccproject.org/aiacc.html.

The Climate Change Explorer provides users with an analytical foundation from which to explore the
climate variables relevant to their particular adaptation decisions. The approach makes crucial links

between understanding vulnerability, monitoring and projecting climate hazards and planning adaptation
processes, and is grounded in several key assumptions regarding the interpretation of climate science.
The Climate Change Explorer (CCE) Tool is a desktop client that provides an interface to download,
manage and visualize downscaled model output. The tool is available at http://www.weadapt.org.

The World Bank Climate Change Portal is intended to provide quick and readily accessible global
climate and climate-related data to the development community. The site is supported by the Google
Maps platform and allows users to access data such as the outputs from climate models, historical
climate observations, natural disaster data, crop yield projections and socioeconomic data at any point
on the globe: http://sdwebx.worldbank.org/climateportal/.

The PREVIEW Global Risk Data Platform is a multiple-agency effort to share spatial data information on
global risk from natural hazards. Users can visualize, download or extract data on past hazardous events,
human and economical hazard exposure and risk from natural hazards. It covers tropical cyclones
and related storm surges, drought, earthquakes, biomass fires, floods, landslides, tsunamis and volcanic
eruptions: http://preview.grid.unep.ch/

Finally, further data can be accessed at the GEO data portal, http://geodata.grid.unep.ch; Global Climate
Observing system (GCOS) for data sets, http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/gcos/index.php; and at World
Climate Research Programme (WCRP) disaster data portal, http://www.disdat.be.

IEA Training Manual Workshop for the National Reporting Toolkit (NRT) 41