The World Meteorological Day

Recently the United Nations՚ Secretary while speaking on WMO March 23,2022, in keeping with this year՚s theme, Early warning and early action has stated that the early warning systems could be critical tools for reducing disaster risk and support climate adaptation. The WMO would lead an effort to make sure that every person on Earth gets the protection from early warning systems within five years. The Secretary further said that the WMO would be presenting an action plan on early warning systems at the 27th Conference of Parties (CoP) to the UNFCCC in November 2022, at Sharm-el-Sheikh, Egypt.

An early warning system for droughts, floods, heatwaves, or storms is an integrated system that alerts people to hazardous weather. It also keeps governments, communities and individuals minimize the possible impacts of the weather event.

World Manifest and Meteorology

About

  • The early warning system allows monitoring of the real time atmospheric conditions on land and at sea.
  • Use of advanced computer numerical models, to predict future weather and climate events effectively.
  • Understanding the risks, the foreseeable storms could bring to an area that would be affected:
    • A city or rural area
    • Polar
    • Coastal
    • Mountainous regions
  • With an intention to continually improve responses ahead of future, climate, water and related environmental hazards, a comprehensive early warning system must also include lessons learned from past events.
  • The early warning systems still not cover a third of the world՚s people, mostly in least developed countries (LDC) and small island developing states (SIDS) , the same is even worse in Africa where 60% of people lack coverage.

Various Reports

Swiss Re Institute Report

  • A Switzerland-based research company.
  • The extreme weather events in 2021 caused a total damage worth $ 105 billion which is also the fourth-highest since 1970.
  • The report also highlighted 10 climate-related disaster events, each of them costing $ 1.5 billion or more.
  • Hurricane Ida was the most expensive event that cost $ 65 billion.
  • Two of the events occurred in India:
    • Cyclone Tauktae
    • Cyclone Yaas

2021 WMO Report on Disaster Statistics

  • A weather, climate or water-related disaster has occurred on an average every day taking the lives of 115 people and causing $ 202 million in losses daily.
  • The number of recorded extreme weather events increased by 50 times due to climate change and better reporting.
  • Due to more and more greenhouse gases being added to the atmosphere every day, the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events is set to rise resulting in warming.
  • Due to better weather prediction and associated early warning systems, the number of lives lost decreased by a factor of three.
  • Hundreds or even thousands of lives in the past few years have been saved in India by the early warning systems such as the IMD՚s regular cyclone alerts, combined with brisk action taken by state and district administrations.

Global Commission on Adaptation Flagship Report

  • This report in 2019 found that just 24 hours warning of a coming storm or heatwave could cut the ensuring damage by 30% .
  • Spending $ 800 million in such systems in the developing countries would avoid losses of $ 3 - 16 billion per year.
  • A need to invest $ 1.5 billion during the coming five years for improving the quality of the services and other related infrastructures in the Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States.

iFLOWS-MUMBAI

  • The Integrated Flood Warning System for Mumbai.
  • Launched in June 2020 by the Union Ministry of Earth Sciences, in collaboration with the disaster management department, Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai.
  • This system successfully alerted the authorities in July 2021 about the heavy rains and flooding post which 120 people were evacuated from the affected areas.
  • A similar kind of system was also established in Chennai in 2019.

Examrace Team at Jul 27, 2022