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UN to roll out global early-warning systems for extreme weather
(Reuters, 23 Mar 2022) One-third of people, mainly in the poorest nations and small island developing states, are still not covered by weather forecasting and other ways of alerting them to threats.
With climate change fuelling dangerous weather worldwide, the United Nations is pledging that early-warning weather monitoring will cover everyone on the planet in five years.
"Half of humanity is already in the danger zone," U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said earlier this week. And yet, "one-third of the world's people, mainly in least developed countries and small island developing states, are still not covered by early warning systems."
Today, there are about five times the number of weather-related disasters than there were in the 1970s. These droughts, floods, heatwaves and storms have killed more than 2 million people and wrought $3.64 trillion in losses worldwide since 1970, WMO data show.
With the trend expected to worsen as global temperatures continue to climb, "there is a need to invest $1.5 billion" in the next five years to predict when extreme events might occur, said World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Petteri Taalas.
It was not immediately clear how much money the U.N. has allocated for the project, part of which was announced at last year’s U.N. climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland.
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Reuters, 23 Mar 2022: UN to roll out global early-warning systems for extreme weather
