ICA&D

The International Climate Assessment & Dataset (ICA&D) is a web-based climate information system coupled to meteorological databases. The International Climate Assessment & Dataset (ICA&D) is the umbrella under which regional implementations are developed. Currently, ICA&D systems exist in Europe, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and West Africa. The ICA&D is a spin-off from the European Climate Assessment & Dataset (ECA&D) established in 1998. Once the ECA&D concept had been refined by years of development and had demonstrated its utility, it is ready to be applied to other regions of the world.

The ECA&D resulted from the collaboration of national meteorological services and universities throughout Europe, the Middle East, and Mediterranean countries. It aims to realize a sustainable operational system for gathering, archiving, and disseminating climate data, with the added benefits of quality control and data analysis. Contributing institutions provide validated daily series for up to 12 meteorological variables ECA&D uses these data to generate a suite of derived information products—which are updated monthly—for use in climate monitoring and services.

Two important user groups of the ICA&D services are researchers from a broad range of disciplines and climate service providers who incorporate basic regional climate data and information into their products. For example, scientists use this information in global climate assessments, comparing it against regional climate models or to analyze species migration, and national meteorological services use the regional information provided by ICA&D to support their national monitoring and climate service activities. Although these meteorological services have always been responsible for providing national weather and climate data and information, the regional perspective of ICA&D supports local decisions by taking into account the fact that many challenges are transboundary—for example, when delta areas are dependent on decisions made upstream.