International Workshop on the Recovery of Climate Heritage in the Indian Ocean rim Countries and Islands

Understanding the science explaining the role of the Indian Ocean in triggering regional and larger scale climate variability and related extremes such as droughts, heavy monsoon and flooding is important to sustainable global development. East African droughts, Australian droughts, flooding in Southern Africa which also frequently hits Mozambique, flooding in India and Pakistan just to name a few, have caused large socio-economic impacts in the affected countries, often resulting in disasters. Developing a strong data foundation will help in achieving an improved understanding of the role of key climate drivers that lead to these extremes.  These data will also provide information on the characteristics of the extremes and enable improved prediction of their occurrence in a timely manner. Over many years, the World Meteorological Organization  and the National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHS) have made significant efforts in capturing climatic data. However, a substantial amount of old climate archives going back to the 19th century are available but often stored under poor conditions. Large parts of these archives are on paper and need to be recovered, imaged and digitized before they deteriorate beyond use.  The implementation plan for the Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS) includes large scale Data Rescue as a priority area.