Climate monitoring

All About Climate Monitoring

Climate monitoring involves collecting observational data; monitoring and making the interpretation of climate variations and change. To understand and predict changes in climate, climatic conditions, atmospheric and ocean observations must be monitored. Climate information and statistics are produced from surface, atmospheric and marine measurements. Daily data helps to understand the frequency of changes and other climate factors. Climate models depict the climate change that arises with the observations. Thus, climate monitoring provides the user the information needed to make effective plans and to work on the operations responding to climate variations. 

Climate change at different time intervals affects various socio-economic and environmental aspects. To deal with them and adapt to changes requires deeper understanding of the cause, magnitude and extent of the impact. The monitoring of climate keeps the user informed in order to plan and work accordingly with respect to climatic variations such as heat waves, droughts, precipitation, flooding etc. Thus, climate monitoring shows how the changes in climate could impact our lives. It also depicts whether a turn of climatic events would be intense or just a small warning sign to remain safe.

The advancement in observing technology and systems have offered an array of in situ, satellite and marine datasets. All these are used for climate-monitoring programs to keep the track of information about the global climate conditions. The increased availability of innovative tools and products keeps the user informed about the climatic conditions.

Repair and maintenance of climate monitoring tools such as satellites is crucial as these have a limited operational lifetime during which the instrument degrades on failure of critical components. Other issues which need to be handled are the huge volume of data and access to data at minimal cost, reprocessing and reanalysis of observations, the management of data from the projections etc.

With upcoming societal changes and development, it is important to monitor and understand climate change. It serves as a basis for increasing the scientific understanding of climate change and plays major role in disaster prevention, environmental protection and other socio-economic development.

Climate is changing at a rapid rate. It therefore becomes important to observe and track changes of climate to understand changes and their origins. Measurements should be taken to support climate monitoring principles and ensure long-term continuity. Monitoring systems must be checked in order to address issues. Climate Monitoring provides a framework to find new observations that help improving planning for future generations.