“The study shows that between 2030 and 2060, the annual mean maximum temperature will increase in most areas of Nepal. While the temperature will go up in the central parts of the country, it will go up by about three degrees in the northwestern mountainous region,” claimed the study. [break]
Under the project “Strengthening Capacity for Managing Climate Change and the Environment,” ADB had coordinated a more specific set of climate change projections for areas as small as 12 square kilometers. Previous climate change data provided projections for wide swathes of up to 100 square kilometers.
“The new data allows for more effective climate response plans to be drawn up,” ADB said in a press statement issued from its headquarters in Manila.
Information on climate change impacts across the country has, until now, been very general. Frequent earthquakes, landslides and melting glaciers also make the country highly vulnerable to climate change.
“The potential applications of this database are manifold: If a farmer has a better idea of how rain patterns are going to change, he can make better decisions about the crops he will plant, while an engineer can make a more informed decision about how to build roads that will last, and the government official can better direct public spending,” said Cindy Malvicini, Senior Water Resources Specialist at ADB.
The data made public on Sunday was prepared by a team comprising experts from Asian Disaster Preparedness Center of Thailand, Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research of Norway, Faculty for Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation of the University of Twente in the Netherlands and Energy and Resources Institute of India. In Nepal, the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology was the focal institute, while Tribhuvan University was the local technical partner.
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