Climate action

Understanding why and where humanitarian disasters are likely to occur is a fundamental step in saving lives and promoting sustainable development. The coping capacity dimension of the INFORM Risk Index (global risk assessment for humanitarian crises and disasters) measures the ability of a country...

Started in 2015, the Covenant of Mayors in Sub-Saharan Africa (CoM SSA) initiative supports Sub-Saharan cities in their fight against climate change and in their efforts in ensuring access to clean energy. CoM SSA is part of the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy (GCoM) – the largest...

The Sahel is an area that, over time, has had multiple definitions, climatic-botanical and political: its limits have been traced in very different ways. Even the usage of this name and its delimitation on maps has been openly questioned and contested. Our contribution proposes a cartography capable...

Critical natural assets are defined as the natural and semi-natural terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems required to maintain 12 of nature’s ‘local’ contributions to people (local NCP) on land. 12 Local NCP for key benefits like security in food, water, hazards, material and culture. as follows: for...

The data provided here are the result of a time-series analysis of carbon density change (in Mg/ha) between 2003-2014 spanning tropical America, Africa, and Asia (23.45 N lat.-23.45 S lat.). The original data is provided as two separate rasters representing (1) carbon density net gain and (2) carbon...

The Dead Wood Carbon and Litter Carbon pools have been estimated at global level as constant fractions of ESA Biomass CCI Above Ground Biomass (AGB), v.3 (2018) using a lookup table based on global ecological zone, elevation and precipitation regime, as proposed by Harris, N.L., Gibbs, D.A., Baccini...

Carbon storage in biomass (biological material) is a key link in the global carbon cycle, and consequently for climate change mitigation. Forests in particular are an important carbon sink that help reduce the greenhouse effect. Together, the above-ground carbon (carbon fraction contained in the...

Africa is considered one of the most vulnerable regions to weather and climate variability. Extreme events such as heat waves have important impacts on public health, water supplies, food security, and more generally on both regional economies and natural ecosystems. A prolonged period of hot days...

Agricultural drought events can affect large regions across the world. Soil moisture (or soil water content) is an important variable for plant growth, and - together with precipitation and evapotranspiration - is a basic component of the hydrological cycle. The Soil Moisture Anomaly (SMA) indicator...

Critical natural assets are defined as the natural and semi-natural terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems required to maintain 12 of nature’s ‘local’ contributions to people (local NCP) in the ocean (blue). 12 Local NCP for key benefits like security in food, water, hazards, material and culture. as...

Climate - in terms of temperature, precipitation and continentality - is a primary determinant in the distribution of vegetation. Salvador Rivas-Martinez and Salvador Rivas-Saenz (2004) developed a global bioclimatic classification system that quantifies key bioclimatic indices reflective of...

Increasing water scarcity and water quality issues are serious constraints in Africa and worldwide. Measuring precipitation anomalies is important for detecting and characterizing meteorological droughts, and, in the agricultural sector especially, for effectively managing climate related...