**7. References**


[8] Beven, John L.; Avila, Lixion A., Blake, Eric S., Brown, Daniel P., Franklin, James L., Knabb, Richard D., Pasch, Richard J., Rhome, Jamie R., Stewart, Stacy R. Atlantic Hurricane Season of 2005. *Monthly Weather Review*, 2008. 136 (3): 1109–1173.

554 Risk Management – Current Issues and Challenges

scenarios.

**Author details** 

**7. References** 

449-468. 2011.

M. Pastén1,8 and O. Sánchez1,9

*New York, United States of America* 

*4Escuela de Ingeniería de Antioquia, Colombia* 

*7Dirección Meteorológica de Chile (DMC), Chile* 

natural events (e.g. a natural event may be a hazard for certain sectors of production, but may be positive for others). The Observatory must therefore consider also Opportunity Assessment and Management policies in the near future to address such profitable

Á.G. Muñoz1,2,3, D. Ruiz1,3,4, P. Ramírez1,5, G. León1,6, J. Quintana1,7, A. Bonilla1,5, W. Torres1,2,

*3International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI). Columbia University in the City of* 

[1] Muñoz, Á.G., Núñez, A., Cova, R. Climate System Simulations: An Integrated, Multi-Scale Approach for Research and Decision-Making. In Computational Simulations and Applications, Chapter 21. Zhu, J. (Ed.), ISBN 978-953- 307-430-6, InTech Publishing. pp.

[2] Muñoz, Ángel G., and Coauthors. An Environmental Watch System for the Andean Countries: El Observatorio Andino. *Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc.*, 2010. 91, 1645–1652. [3] Muñoz, Á. G., X. Chourio, S. Reverol, A. Urdaneta, C. Díaz. ANDESGRID: A Grid Insfrastructure for Geosciences in the Andes. *Proc. Latin-American Conf. on High Performance Computing*, Gramado, Brazil, Bull, Hewlett-Packard, Intel Corporation,

[4] Mora, S. Disasters are not natural: risk management, a tool for development. From: Culshaw, M. G., Reeves, H. J., Jefferson, I. & Spink, T. W. (eds) Engineering Geology for Tomorrow's Cities. Geological Society, London, Engineering Geology Special

[5] Vaughan, C. (Climate Service Partnership's Program Manager), personal

[6] Mora, S., Keipi, K. Disaster risk management in development projects: models and checklists. *Bulletin of Engineering Geology and the Environment*, 2006, 65, 155-165. [7] Cardona, O. Indicators of disaster risk and risk management in Latin America and the Caribbean. Instituto de Estudios Ambientales (IDEA). Department of Sustainable

Development, Inter-American Development Bank, Washington, DC. 2006.

*6Instituto de Hidrología, Meteorología y Estudios Ambientales (IDEAM), Colombia* 

*1Observatorio Latinoamericano de Eventos Extraordinarios (OLE2) 2Centro de Modelado Científico (CMC). Universidad del Zulia, Venezuela* 

*5Comité Regional de Recursos Hídricos (CRRH), Costa Rica* 

*8Dirección Nacional de Aeronáutica Civil (DINAC), Paraguay 9Servicio Nacional de Meteorología e Hidrología (SENAMHI), Perú* 

Microsoft, Silicon Graphics International, 2010. 9–14.

Publications, 2009. 22, 101–112.

communication.


malaria transmission in two Colombian endemic-regions: contributions to a National Malaria Early Warning System. *Malaria Journal* 5:66, doi:10.1186/1475-2875-5-66. 2006.

**Chapter 23** 

© 2012 Charles et al., licensee InTech. This is an open access chapter distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2012 Charles et al., licensee InTech. This is a paper distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

**Managing Climate Risk** 

**with Seasonal Forecasts** 

Andrew Charles, Yuriy Kuleshov and David Jones

cyclone seasons are examples of seasonal climate anomalies.

Seasonal climate refers to average conditions in the atmosphere and ocean over time scales of the order of three months. When considering risks associated with seasonal climate we are concerned with deviations from normal conditions, or 'climate anomalies'. Summers that are hotter than usual, extended drought conditions and exceptionally active tropical

The countries of the Pacific Ocean are exposed to climate risk across a range of sectors, most notably in water resources, agriculture and disaster preparedness. In Fiji, the forestry industry is affected by an increased likelihood of fires in dry conditions and by access roads becoming too muddy to work on in wet conditions. In Samoa and Fiji the supply of hydroelectric power is vulnerable to rainfall deficiencies, as dams tend to be relatively small in comparison to average inflows. Extreme weather conditions threaten tourism revenue for islands such as Rarotonga in the Cook Islands. Seasonal variations of ocean temperatures, which can drive the migration of species such as Tuna and cause the bleaching of coral reefs in which fish spawn affect the productivity of fisheries which are an important economic resource for countries such as Kiribati. Seasonal variations in surface water and temperature can create more favourable conditions for host vectors of diseases such as malaria,

While many climate anomalies are essentially chaotic and not predictable, there exists large-scale coupling (feedback) between the atmosphere and the ocean, which imparts a degree of predictability to variations of seasonal climate in the atmosphere-ocean-land surface system. The most significant manifestation of this coupling, and the physical source of much of this predictability is the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), a quasiperiodic mode of variability of the equatorial Pacific Ocean [2]. The primary manifestation

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/2568

increasing their prevalence. [1]

**1. Introduction** 

