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The continuing effects of climate change require farmers and growers to have greater understanding of how these changes affect crop production. However, while climatic data is generally available to help provide much of that understanding, it can often be in a form not easy to digest. The proposed Combined Location Online Weather Data (CLOWD) framework is an easy-to-use online platform for analysing recent and historical weather data of any location within Australia at the click of a map. CLOWD requires no programming skills and operates in any HTML5 web browser on PC and mobile devices. It enables comparison between current and previous growing seasons over a range of environmental parameters, and can create a plain-English PDF report for offline use, using natural language generation (NLG). This paper details the platform, the design decisions taken and outlines how farmers and growers can use CLOWD to better understand current growing conditions. Prototypes of CLOWD are now online for PCs and smartphones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

National greenhouse gas inventories (NGHGIs) will play an increasingly important role in tracking country progress against United Nations (UN) Paris Agreement commitments. Yet uncertainty in land use, land use change, and forestry (LULUCF) NGHGHI estimates may undermine international confidence in emission reduction claims, particularly for countries that expect forests and agriculture to contribute large near-term GHG reductions. In this paper, we propose an analytical framework for implementing the uncertainty provisions of the UN Paris Agreement Enhanced Transparency Framework, with a view to identifying the largest sources of LULUCF NGHGI uncertainty and prioritizing methodological improvements. Using the USA as a case study, we identify and attribute uncertainty across all US NGHGI LULUCF “uncertainty elements” (inputs, parameters, models, and instances of plot-based sampling) and provide GHG flux estimates for omitted inventory categories. The largest sources of uncertainty are distributed across LULUCF inventory categories, underlining the importance of sector-wide analysis: forestry (tree biomass sampling error; tree volume and specific gravity allometric parameters; soil carbon model), cropland and grassland (DayCent model structure and inputs), and settlement (urban tree gross to net carbon sequestration ratio) elements contribute over 90% of uncertainty. Net emissions of 123 MMT CO2e could be omitted from the US NGHGI, including Alaskan grassland and wetland soil carbon stock change (90.4 MMT CO2), urban mineral soil carbon stock change (34.7 MMT CO2), and federal cropland and grassland N2O (21.8 MMT CO2e). We explain how these findings and other ongoing research can support improved LULUCF monitoring and transparency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigated the vulnerability of the agriculture sector and rural agriculture livelihoods in the Bicol River Basin (BRB) of the Philippines to projected changes in climate. The geographical characteristics of the BRB feature eight major sub-basins or watersheds consisting of Libmanan-Pulantuna, Ragay Hills, Thiris, Naga-Yabo, Pawili River, Waras-Lalo, Naporog, and Quinali. The study applied the combination of the participatory tools and the Climate Risk Vulnerability Assessment (CRVA) framework to gather information on local climate vulnerabilities and contexts. Briefly, the CRVA employed geospatial modeling and utilized several indicators which are presumed to affect vulnerability including exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity which were aggregated to provide an index of vulnerability. This enabled us to identify areas of exposure and vulnerability and pointed areas of greatest need for strengthened adaptive capacity and risk management. Our findings revealed that vulnerability in the BRB was perceived to be relatively prevalent and that typhoons, flooding, and drought were identified to contribute significant impacts to rural livelihood. Furthermore, our findings in the CRVA suggested significant regional differences in vulnerability in the BRB. The majority of the towns in the central and northwestern portions of the BRB will largely experience increased vulnerability, particularly, in the Thiris sub-basin including some parts of Ragay Hills, Waras-Lalo, and the northwestern Libmanan-Pulantuna sub-basins. On the contrary, the entire Quinali region on the south is revealed to have the lowest vulnerability index. The clear policy implication of these accounts will be on how to mobilize developmental thrusts in both areas of disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation at the sub-national level to reinforce local-based climate priority setting in adaptation interventions and policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]