FORUM: Hydrometeorological and Climate Information for Disaster Risk Reduction. World Meteorological Day 2022.
On World Meteorological Day; this 23 March; we will highlight the critical role of early warning systems and early action as an adaptive measure for climate change. Greater coordination between national meteorological and hydrological services, disaster management authorities and development agencies is fundamental to better prevention, preparedness and response. Join the conversation with the hastags #WorldMetDay, #Earlywarningearlyaction.
Greetings from the World Meteorological Organization secretariat in Geneva.
The top priority of WMO is to protect lives and livelihoods from weather, climate and
water extremes.
Every minute of every day of the year.
I am therefore very happy that the theme of World Meteorological Day 2022 is “Early
Warning and Early Action.”
It celebrates the great achievements of national meteorological and hydrological
services in improved early warning systems. It also highlights the vital work of the
disaster risk reduction community in making sure that these early warnings lead to
early action.
But we cannot be complacent. We face many challenges, especially in making sure
that early warnings reach the last mile to the most vulnerable who need them most.
Climate change is already very visible through more extreme weather in all parts of
the world. We are seeing more intense heatwaves and drought and forest fires. We
have more water vapor in the atmosphere, which leads to extreme rainfall and
deadly flooding. The warming of the ocean fuels more powerful tropical storms and
rising sea levels increase the impacts.
We expect this negative trend to continue. Greenhouse gas concentrations are at
record levels, locking in climate change to continue for decades to come, melting of
glaciers and sea level rise up to centuries.
In addition to climate change mitigation, climate change adaptation is a top priority.
Early warning systems are a powerful way to adapt.
2
Last year WMO published a report on disaster statistics for the past 50 years. It
showed that there were more than 11 000 disasters linked to weather, climate and
water-related hazards, almost equal to one disaster per day. There were 2 million
deaths – or 115 per day.
The number of disasters has increased five-fold in the past 50 years. And the
economic cost has soared.
But the good news is that the number of casualties has fallen dramatically. We are
better than ever before at saving lives.
Supercomputers, satellites and advances in science have greatly increased the
accuracy of our forecasts. Mobile phone alerts and weather apps can reach even
remote areas.
WMO is promoting impact-based forecasting, of what the weather will be and what it
will do. That is needed to enhance the preparedness and early action of various user
and customer groups, who are dependent on weather.
But much more remains to be done. Only half of the 193 Members of WMO have
multi-hazard early warning systems in place. There is also a major need to enhance
the impact based forecasting skills of a large fraction of Members.
There are severe gaps in weather and hydrological observing networks in Africa,
some parts of Latin America and in Pacific and Caribbean island. This undermines
forecasts local and globally.
WMO has therefore created a financing mechanism known as SOFF (The
Systematic Observation Financing Facility) to drive investment in the basic observing
system and fill data gaps.
WMO is an implementing partner in the Climate Risk and Early Warning Systems
Initiative (CREWS), which builds resilience among vulnerable countries and
communities.
WMO is spearheading a new water and climate coalition to focus more attention on
water-related hazards and shortages. We have highly successful programmes and
projects on tropical cyclones, coastal inundation, floods and drought.
In Geneva we have joined forces with the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction to
form a centre of excellence on climate change and disasters.
WMO has been developing a support mechanism to provide reliable and
authoritative information to the UN humanitarian agencies to be able to optimize the
humanitarian aid before and after a weather related disaster. We are working
together with financing institutions like the World Bank, European Union, UNDP,
Green Climate Fund, to allocate more funding to early warning services and to
ensure sustainability of the investments.
3
And of course, WMO is committed to the 2030 international agenda on climate
action, sustainable development and disaster risk reduction.
WMO’s vision is that “by 2030, we see a world where all nations, especially the most
vulnerable, are more resilient to the socioeconomic consequences of extreme
weather, climate, water and other environmental events.
Early warnings work. They must work for everyone. They must lead to early action.
I wish you all a happy World Meteorological Day
WMO Secretary-General.
EVENT
Want to catch all the action from World Meteterology Day 2022 ceremony? Tune in to our live event from Geneva on 23 March 2022 from 14:00 to 15:30 (CET). To participate in the event, join us via Zoom where interpretation into Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian and Spanish will be available. The ceremony will also be live-streamed on the WMO YouTube channel in English.
CAMPAIGN MATERIAL: 2022 World Meteorological Day
About the WMO' World Weather Research Programme (WWRP).
As the science is advancing, critical questions are arising such as the potential sources of predictability on weekly, monthly and longer time scales; seamless prediction from minutes to months; optimal use of local and global observing systems and the effective utilization of supercomputers.
In addition, communication of forecasts, warnings and their uncertainty, as well as some indication of the impacts of these warnings, raise new challenges for weather-related approaches for the full value chain. All of these challenges can only be met through strong interdisciplinary collaborations and thus the World Weather Research Programme relies on strong links with social scientists, Early Career Scientists and public-private partnerships.
No comments:
Post a Comment