European climate action needs data. Insight’s Mark Roantree is part of a new EU Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) Action network to link up datasets that capture vital information about climate changes across Europe.

Titled FAIRNESS (FAIR NETWORK OF MICROMETEOROLOGICAL MEASUREMENTS), the network has been established to address the issue of available data for climate based research. The lack of data or inability to exploit existing datasets is a significant obstacle to European climate research. The annual cost of not having FAIR research data costs the European economy at least €10.2bn every year (PwC EU Services, 2018).

The current state of weather-induced agricultural losses, water use for irrigation, the appearance of new invasive species and disease vectors, new environmental zoning of plant diseases and pests, deforestation, increased urbanisation, rural-to-urban migration and increased urban energy consumption for cooling/heating impose scientific, all require appropriate data on which to build predictive models.

The development of a Knowledge Portal will help in the compilation of a registry of validated rural and urban micrometeorological datasets; and measurement and data management recommendations designed in order to meet FAIR principles and avoid temporal and spatial gaps.

The COST Action, which started in 2021, will run for four years.  Mark Roantree is on the Management Committee of the COST Action in addition to being a member of the Core Group for Strategic Planning and Lead of Working Group 2 which seeks to establish a Knowledge Sharing Platform for climate datasets.