As many of you will know, funding has been secured for the ongoing coordination of ISIMIP within the context of JPI-Climate funded ISIpedia project.
Within ISIpedia we will have the opportunity to work directly with stakeholders to improve the quality of climate-impacts modelling for particular regions and areas of interest. Part of this process may include discussing which datasets are needed to represent e.g. local management or protection measures to adjust impact simulations to regional conditions. These data sets might include temporally and spatially resolved information about historical growing seasons, fertilizer input, flood protection levels, occurrences of diseases and pests in the agriculture or forestry sector etc. but also information about e.g. considered future adaptation measures. Better representation of these direct drivers of climate impact indicators can lead to a better representation of reported fluctuations or trends and increase the relevance of the future projections. For example, there are already studies that show that a better representation of sowing dates leads to improved modelling results, without changing how the bio-physical processes are represented in a model.
We are therefore interested to hear about the type of data you would need in order to improve your modelling capabilities. Compiling such a list will help us in communicating with stakeholders about what is needed to improve the services we can provide. Please respond by either replying to this email or adding directly to this document.
Furthermore, we would also be interested to hear from you about examples where making use of such data sets has led to improved modelling results.