These country-level climate data summaries are intended to address the climate change information gap for developing countries by making use of existing climate data to generate a series of country-level studies of climate observations and the multi-model projections made available through the WCRP CMIP3. A consistent approach has been applied for 52 developing countries in order to produce an 'off the shelf' analysis of climate data, and also make available the underlying data for each country for use in further research.
For each of the 52 countries, a report contains a set of maps and diagrams demonstrating the observed and projected climates of that country as country average timeseries as well as maps depicting changes on a 2.5° grid and summary tables of the data. A narrative summarises the data in the figures, and placing it in the context of the country's general climate.
A dataset containing the underlying observed and model data for that country, is made available for use in further research projects. The files are smaller and more manageable than the global fields made available by the PCMDI, and in text format which can easily downloaded, read and manipulated.
The project rationale and methodology is described in McSweeney et al (2010). For further technical details of the contributing data sources, and methods used in these reports, and advice on how to interpret the please refer to the accompanying documentation.
Information is available for 61 countries:
How to use the UNDP Climate Change Country Profiles
Please read the following documentation:
How to cite the UNDP Country Profiles
Please cite both the specific report(s) and the article in Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (McSweeney et al, 2010) that describes the overall approach and methodology. For example, for Afghanistan, the profiles should be cited as follows:
- McSweeney, C., New, M. & Lizcano, G. 2010. UNDP Climate Change Country Profiles: Afghanistan. Available: http://country-profiles.geog.ox.ac.uk/ [Accessed 10 May 2013].
- McSweeney, C., New, M., Lizcano, G. & Lu, X. 2010. The UNDP Climate Change Country Profiles Improving the Accessibility of Observed and Projected Climate Information for Studies of Climate Change in Developing Countries. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 91, 157-166.
Further Information
If you have any queries about the UNDP Climate Change Country Profiles or problems accessing the data in these webpages please contact Professor Mark New in the first instance.