CCCA-News 4/2016: CCCA Data Centre online, latest calls...

One of CCCA's core services is providing easy access to data relevant to climate research from a wide variety of sources. This data is made accessible through the CCCA Data Portal and is continuously expanded. On 1 July 2016, the testing phase of the CCCA Data Portal got underway.

Through the CCCA Data Portal, the CCCA Data Centre acts as a data provider, ensuring access to the distributed information of CCCA members and other institutions involved in climate research in Austria. The aim is to integrate, locate, and make available a wide variety of data in one central place. This data covers not only meteorological data (precipitation, temperature), but — a Europe-wide innovation — also social science data, for example from interviews and surveys. To this end, a web-based infrastructure has been set up that enables transparent data cataloguing, data search, and archiving.

Alongside some test data, you'll find the current climate scenarios from the project "ÖKS 15 - Climate Scenarios for Austria" as the first complete dataset in the CCCA Data Portal — these are referenced in the current ACRP call (see below).

In order to refine the portal's functionalities together with its users, the CCCA Data Centre team would welcome feedback on the beta version of the Data Portal at datenzentrum@ccca.ac.at

Any technical questions about the Data Portal can be directed to Chris Schubert (Head of the CCCA Data Centre)

APCC Special Report: Health, demography and climate change

The current 9th ACRP call has included a call for an APCC Special Report on the topic of "Health, demography and climate change" (see ACRP guidelines 4.5).

One of the key goals of Special Reports, as outlined in the APCC standards, is strong coverage of the entire Austrian community in the relevant subject area. To this end, the CCCA office is available as a communication hub and first point of contact for expressions of interest in contributing to the advertised Special Report.

If you're interested in contributing to the Special Report on health, demography and climate change, you can express your interest to the CCCA office by email at info@ccca.ac.at .
Please also indicate specifically how you'd like to get involved — for example, whether you:

• would like to be involved through events (e.g. expert or stakeholder meetings) or similar
• are able to contribute specialised written input to the Special Report (including grey literature)
• are interested, given your expertise, in taking on editorial responsibility within the Special Report.

Responses will be collected by the CCCA office and made available to one or more future project consortia.

The submission deadline for ACRP projects is 19 September 2016, so we'd kindly ask you to send us your responses by 16 August if possible, to give project consortia sufficient time for exchange and proposal development. Later responses will, however, also be accepted.

If you have any questions about APCC and the advertised Special Report, please feel free to get in touch with the CCCA office team at info@ccca.ac.at.

Visits to the CCCA Website from English-speaking countries have increased noticeably over the past few months. This prompted us to translate the website, so that the content is available to an international audience!

The Austrian cryosphere research community met to exchange ideas about international networks. On 15 June 2016, the first workshop of the CCCA networking project "Ö-KryoNet" took place.

For this, 13 Austrian cryosphere researchers from eight research institutions, along with a representative of the Salzburg regional administration, gathered in Salzburg. The aim of this first meeting was to present the international initiatives GCOS, GTN-G, GTN-P, GLIMS, RGI, GCW and LTER, each overseen by individual institutions, and to identify and discuss potential synergies as well as possible gaps. As a first concrete result of the networking meeting, it was agreed to bring together all the presented initiatives within the CCCA Data Centre, in order to make the available data and information accessible to a wider research community in Austria.

The aim here is by no means to create additional redundancies, but rather to further support the visibility and accessibility of the data for various user groups.

If you're interested in getting involved in this open networking project, please get in touch with Annett Bartsch (ZAMG) - annett.bartsch@zamg.ac.at.

The first teacher training event at the University Centre in Obergurgl was successfully completed. Between 26 and 28 June 2016, 32 teachers from AHS, BHS and LMS schools across various federal states engaged with the core ideas of the project under the guidance of the k.i.d.Z.21-Austria team from the University of Innsbruck. In doing so, they developed concrete steps that are important for implementation at their own schools. This marks another important milestone towards an Austria-wide roll-out of k.i.d.Z.21-Austria.

A large proportion of the teachers will now be launching k.i.d.Z.21-Austria projects at their own schools in autumn 2016. The team at the University of Innsbruck is looking forward to an exciting school year with lots of new k.i.d.Z.21-Austria "kids"!

For more information about the project, visit the k.i.d.Z.21 website or the blog.

Z_GIS finalized a spatially explicit vulnerability assessment for climate change adaptation in Mauritania; Client: The German Federal Enterprise for International Cooperation (GIZ). Although the living conditions in the Sahel are difficult and extremely dependent on weather conditions, especially in rural areas, adaptation to climate change is a key issue to address in the wider development context.

To alleviate this issue, the GIZ initiated a project to assess how the capacity to adapt to climate change in rural areas can be improved. The main objectives were to support key national actors in the design and implementation of adaptation measures identified within national planning processes and to strengthen intra- and inter-sectoral cooperation.

In a joint consortium with adelphi from Germany, the Department of Geoinformatics - Z_GIS at the University of Salzburg carried out a spatially explicit vulnerability assessment to climate change for the two main livelihood sectors of Brakna and Assaba: agricultural and pastoralism activities.

For more information please, click here.

In a joint project with UNEP and a number of other institutions the University of Salzburg and its Department for Geoinformatics - Z_GIS contributed to a new UNEP report on 'Loss and Damage: The Role of Ecosystem Services'. The report was launched earlier this month at the second session of the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA) in Nairobi and aims to enhance understanding of climatic stressor effects on ecosystems and possible correlations and implications for societal losses and damages.

Link to the report.

For additional information please see climate-l.iisd.org.

Universities, universities of applied sciences, universities of education, non-university research institutions and private universities are invited from Wednesday, 15 June 2016 to Friday, 30 September 2016 to submit research projects that are carried out exclusively with the involvement of pupils. As close collaboration with partner schools is a prerequisite for a successful application, the submission window will remain open until the end of September. This gives research institutions and schools sufficient time to prepare successful collaborations.

In 2016, a total of 5.15 million euros is available for the ACRP funding programme and 300,000 euros for the APCC Special Report. Funding is available for research projects dealing with aspects of climate change, its impacts in Austria and possible adaptation measures.

• Regarding guideline Chapter 4.0: Information on the CCCA Data Centre and the ÖKS data can be found in this newsletter or here.
• Regarding guideline Chapter 4.5: Information on APCC standards can be found in this newsletter or here.

The submission deadline is 19 September 2016 at 17:00.

Second call for the submission of projects under EIP-AGRI. Changing conditions brought about by advancing globalisation, digitalisation and climate change frequently pose major challenges for agricultural and forestry enterprises, which urgently require new solutions and approaches. Through targeted collaboration between practice and research, problems in the agricultural and forestry sector are to be solved innovatively and translated more quickly into new findings, products, services and technologies.

Funding is available for so-called Operational Groups, in which partners from various fields (e.g. farmers, researchers, upstream and downstream sectors, associations) work together on innovative projects.

Project proposals and funding applications can be submitted until 30 September 2016.

All information on the calls mentioned above and further calls can be found here.

Current job vacancies can be found on our job board.