The climatological relationships between wind and solar energy supply in Britain

We use reanalysis data to investigate the daily co-variability of wind and solar irradiance in Britain, and its implications for renewable energy supply balancing. The joint distribution of daily-mean wind speeds and irradiances shows that irradiance has a much stronger seasonal cycle than wind, due to the rotational tilt of the Earth. Irradiance is weakly anticorrelated with wind speed throughout the year ($-0.4 \lesssim \rho \lesssim -0.2$): there is a weak tendency for windy days to be cloudier. This is particularly true in Atlantic-facing regions (western Scotland, south-west England). The east coast of Britain has the weakest anticorrelation, particularly in winter, primarily associated with a relative increase in the frequency of clear-but-windy days. We also consider the variability in total power output from onshore wind turbines and solar photovoltaic panels. In all months, daily variability in total power is always reduced by incorporating solar capacity. The scenario with the least seasonal variability is approximately 70%-solar to 30%-wind. This work emphasises the importance of considering the full distribution of daily behaviour rather than relying on long-term average relationships or correlations. In particular, the anticorrelation between wind and solar power in Britain cannot solely be relied upon to produce a well-balanced energy supply.Comment: 19 pages, 19 figures, accepted for publication in Renewable Energy. Text updated to match accepted version (one footnote added, some references corrected

The inter-linkages between rapid growth in livestock production, climate change, and the impacts on water resources, land use, and deforestation

Livestock systems globally are changing rapidly in response to human population growth, urbanization, and growing incomes. This paper discusses the linkages between burgeoning demand for livestock products, growth in livestock production, and the impacts this may have on natural resources, and how these may both affect and be affected by climate change in the coming decades. Water and land scarcity will increasingly have the potential to constrain food production growth, with adverse impacts on food security and human well-being. Climate change will exacerbate many of these trends, with direct effects on agricultural yields, water availability, and production risk. In the transition to a carbon-constrained economy, livestock systems will have a key role to play in mitigating future emissions. At the same time, appropriate pricing of greenhouse gas emissions will modify livestock production costs and patterns. Health and ethical considerations can also be expected to play an increasing role in modifying consumption patterns of livestock products, particularly in more developed countries. Livestock systems are heterogeneous, and a highly differentiated approach needs to be taken to assessing impacts and options, particularly as they affect the resource-poor and those vulnerable to global change. Development of comprehensive frameworks that can be used for assessing impacts and analyzing trade-offs at both local and regional levels is needed for identifying and targeting production practices and policies that are locally appropriate and can contribute to environmental sustainability, poverty alleviation, and economic development.Livestock&Animal Husbandry,Wetlands,Wildlife Resources,Agricultural Knowledge&Information Systems,Rural Development Knowledge&Information Systems

Future Livestock Systems: Scenario-guided policy review workshop

The recent CCAFS and the LSIL scenarios process focuses on contextual drivers of change for agriculture and food security – climate change and socio-economic changes (e.g. in markets, governance, broad economic developments, infrastructure)

THE IMPACTS OF DAIRY CATTLE OWNERSHIP ON THE NUTRITIONAL STATUS OF PRE-SCHOOL CHILDREN IN COASTAL KENYA

Anthropometric measurements for children and household characteristics were collected form 198 households in coastal Kenya to examine the impacts of dairy technology adoption on nutritional status. Random effects models indicate that dairy technology adoption positively influences chronic malnutrition, but that dairy consumption has a larger impact than adoption per se.Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Livestock Production/Industries,

How will the world perceive livestock agriculture in relation to the impacts on, and of, climate change?

The livestock sector globally consttutes a development conundrum: the benefts and the costs are both mult-faceted and highly context-specifc, and their honest appraisal defes simple analysis and easy categorizaton. In the past, changes in the demand for livestock products have been largely driven by human populaton growth, income growth and urbanizaton, and the producton response in diferent livestock systems has been associated with science and technology improvement as well as with increases in animal numbers. In the future, producton will increasingly be afected by competton for natural resources (partcularly land and water), competton between food and feed, and probably by the need to operate in a carbon-constrained economy. Demand in developed countries is likely to be afected by environmental and animal welfare legislaton and by human health concerns and changing socio- cultural values. On the other hand, in many developing countries, partcularly in Africa, livestock keeping will contnue to be a critcal asset to many millions of smallholders and pastoralists: many of these people have few if any other livelihood optons

Future selection of additional CCAFS target regions

The original choice of the three target regions for CCAFS started from the understanding that South Asia and Africa are particularly vulnerable to climate change and deserving of priority attention. To summarise, of the various candidates in these two parts of the world, the decision to select three reflected a balance between two competing considerations: (i) working across contexts that are sufficiently heterogeneous to ensure that outputs and outcomes of place based research have global relevance, and (ii) ensuring that sufficient resources are brought to bear to address the deliberately complex problems that CCAFS seeks to address. The initial region selection process sought to sample across the challenges of major hydro meteorological shocks, significant climate related environmental problems, and high rural poverty rates coupled with large populations dependent on rainfed subsistence agriculture. Other factors included were the strength of national and regional climate institutions and processes that can support climate information for adaptation, the degree of CGIAR presence, overall progress toward food security goals, and opportunities for synergistic research with the potential for both immediate regional benefits and transferability beyond the regions. For the future, similar considerations could be applied. As before, projected future climate change is not likely to be a strong discriminator among candidate regions, as all regions are expected to warm, future rainfall trends are subject to considerable uncertainty, and changes in climatology are not likely to be detectable for the next ten years at least

Recalibrating Food Production in the Developing World: Global Warming Will Change More Than Just the Climate

An analysis of the effects of climate change on 22 critical agricultural commodities and three important natural resources in the developing world reveals a number of cross-cutting themes: The world’s agricultural systems face an uphill struggle in feeding a projected nine to ten billion people by 2050. Climate change introduces a significant hurdle in this struggle. - Securing and maintaining necessary levels of calories, protein and nutrients for populations around the world will be an exceptional challenge. - Recalibrating agriculture in the face of climate change is more than planting crops that can tolerate warmer weather. Some commodities, for example, can grow in warm weather but cannot resist the insects and diseases whose prevalence will increase. Others can tolerate a lack of water but not the sporadic flooding that occurs with more common weather extremes. - Even as global deforestation continues, trees continue to be valued as a provider of agricultural commodities like nuts and fruit; as a mitigating resource that removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere; and also as a staple of adaptation—trees help stabilize soil erosion, better regulate water, as well as provide shade, firewood and fodder. - Production of the most common commodity staples—wheat, maize and rice—will be challenged by new weather patterns. Adjustments in production, replacement with commodities that can tolerate the new conditions in different regions, and innovations in technology are key elements of adaptation. - Raising livestock and catching fish and other aquatic products—two of the more common sources of protein—will also be challenged by a new climate. In some areas, different plants, breeds and species can provide substitutions, but in others, adaptation is critical. - This recalibration of agriculture will eventually extend beyond what is grown and raised. The world’s many cultures must adapt to the changing dinner menu forced upon them due to climate change

Study of Staff Compensation Practices at International Centers

General information about the practices of the IARCs in compensating staff, based on a report prepared by Phillip Thorson in 1978 and early 1979 for the Center Directors. The document includes a summary, study terms of reference, and underlying assumptions of the study. Detailed information about compensation is considered confidential, and therefore was not included. Agenda document, CGIAR meeting October-November 1979

Using the Twentieth Century Reanalysis to assess climate variability for the European wind industry

We characterise the long-term variability of European near-surface wind speeds using 142 years of data from the Twentieth Century Reanalysis (20CR), and consider the potential of such long-baseline climate data sets for wind energy applications. The low resolution of the 20CR would severely restrict its use on its own for wind farm site-screening. We therefore perform a simple statistical calibration to link it to the higher-resolution ERA-Interim data set (ERAI), such that the adjusted 20CR data has the same wind speed distribution at each location as ERAI during their common period. Using this corrected 20CR data set, wind speeds and variability are characterised in terms of the long-term mean, standard deviation, and corresponding trends. Many regions of interest show extremely weak trends on century timescales, but contain large multidecadal variability. Since reanalyses such as ERAI are often used to provide the background climatology for wind farm site assessments, but contain only a few decades of data, our results can be used as a way of incorporating decadal-scale wind climate variability into such studies, allowing investment risks for wind farms to be reduced.Comment: 18 pages, plus 4 page supplementary information included here as Appendix D. This is the authors' corrected version, matching the content of the version accepted by Theoretical and Applied Climatolog

Climate and agriculture in East Africa: the future is mixed

COLLECTIVE ACTION NEWS is a periodical e-publication of the CGIAR’s Regional Collective Action in Eastern and Southern Afric