As extreme weather events such as floods, drought, heatwaves, and storms result in hundreds of billions of dollars of economic losses and wreak a heavy toll on human lives and well-being, ‘Early Warning Systems’ have emerged as an effective and feasible climate adaptation measure that saves lives while providing a tenfold return on investment.
As a result, an ‘Early Warnings for All’ Action Plan has been unveiled at the ongoing 27th Conference of the Parties (COP) of the UNFCCC, which is about developing a global early warning system for extreme weather events intensified by climate change. Unveiled by United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres, the plan has been drawn up by the World Meteorological Organization and partners, which India plans to support fully.
“We fully support the Secretary General’s agenda to achieve Early Warnings for All. The global pace of climate mitigation is not enough to contain the rate of climate change. There is an urgent need for the world to acknowledge the cascading natural hazards that cause substantial losses around the world,” said Bhupender Yadav, Union Minister for Environment Forest and Climate Change while speaking at the UN Secretary-General-High-Level Round Table at the World leaders’ Summit, COP 27.
India’s Action
Over the last few years, India has also made concerted efforts towards making early warning impact-based as well as more easily understandable and actionable by communities. India has integrated hazard, vulnerability, and exposure information to develop Web – DCRA (Dynamic composite Risk Atlas) to enable swift and advanced action on early warnings.
The Cyclone Warning Division (CWD) at IMD, New Delhi also acts as a multilateral Regional Specialised Meteorological Centre for monitoring, predicting and issuing warning services on tropical cyclones developing over the north Indian Ocean (one of the six centres in the World) along with 13 countries in the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea region. The collaboration helped in the exchange of meteorological data from the Bay of Bengal (BoB) and Arabian Sea countries to IMD and improved monitoring and forecast.
Moreover, the meteorological data of satellite and radar, and model guidance from IMD along with tropical cyclone advisory bulletins helped the countries to minimize losses of lives. For example, the number of lives lost - due to tropical cyclones during the last 10 years - has been limited to 100 not only in India but also in all the countries in the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea region for which IMD provides tropical cyclone forecast and advisories.
India has been working on strengthening end-to-end early warning systems for all hydro-meteorological hazards, which has led to some concrete results says the minister.
“We have reduced mortality from cyclones by up to 90% over the last 15 years. On both east and west coasts, we have nearly 100% coverage of early warning systems for cyclones. Similarly, for other hazards – such as heat waves – we are making swift progress, leading to much greater resilience of our communities,” the minister said.
And going forward, India would now like to maximize the full potential of Early Warning Systems for not just reducing the loss of lives but also livelihoods and national development gains, he added.
India has spearheaded the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI) which is working towards developing applications of climate forecast and early warning for reducing infrastructure losses and disruption in basic services. However, he also highlighted that these issues lose attention quickly, as the countries that are most able to do something about it are the least affected. They are also the biggest contributors to climate change.
Also read: COP27 in Egypt: Climate emergency, net zero emissions and climate finance dominate inauguration day