By Andrea Januta and Kanupriya Kapoor | November 4, 2021
INSURANCE JOURNAL
GLASGOW – As climate change triggers deadly heatwaves, droughts and floods, three U.N. agencies on Wednesday rolled out funding plans to improve weather forecasting in vulnerable countries.
The initiative, announced at the U.N. climate summit, aims to plug gaps in weather monitoring and data collection so developing countries can better prepare for possible climate-fueled disasters.
Over the next decade, organizers at the U.N.’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) plan to boost weather monitoring in 75 small island nations and least-developed countries that have done little to cause the climate crisis but face the biggest and costliest impacts.
“We have to invest in weather and climate services,” WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas told conference attendees. “Without observations we are not able to provide good services.”
“In modeling we say that if you put junk in your forecasting models you are getting junk out. Unfortunately that’s the situation in several developing countries and also several island state countries,” he said.
Improving rain forecasts, for instance, can help farmers manage their fields, communities manage water resources or governments plan for food imports when yields look likely to falter. They can also allow people to prepare for possible flooding.
For the Red Cross in Burkina Faso, such forecasts – when they exist – are crucial to the aid organization’s budget and procurement planning, Red Cross climate scientist Kiswendsida Guigma said.
But in many places, there is a “huge gap” in accuracy and detail, Guigma said. “We don’t have very dense networks of instruments collecting data, and (there is) a lack of human and technical capacity.”
The new initiative, called the Systematic Observations Finance Facility, is led by the WMO, the U.N. Development Programme and the U.N. Environment Programme and falls under global plans to provide $100 billion a year in climate financing to poorer nations.
Failure by rich nations to meet this 2020 goal has earned wide rebuke in Glasgow. On Tuesday U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said the world might meet that goal by 2022.
Improving weather data can also help with longer-term predictability around climate change, said Lars Peter Riishojgaard, director of the WMO’s Earth System Branch.
“If you’re a rural economy with subsistence farming, you need to know: Can people have their livelihoods where they are right now, or do they need to pick different crops?” Riishojgaard said. “If you can’t predict it, you can’t adapt to it.”
Disappearing Data
In recent years, weather data for Africa has declined as readings from weather balloons equipped with observation equipment – known as radiosondes – decreased by about half between 2015 and 2020.
Radiosonde data, which unlike satellite data is collected at various atmospheric altitudes, is crucial for both weather predictions and climate modeling. Lack of investment, security conflicts and other problems have prevented African countries from floating new balloons, said Columbia University climate scientist Tufa Dinku.
“There is almost no data outside the roads, outside the towns and cities,” he said. And “if you think about it, agriculture doesn’t happen in towns or cities.”
That has left African farmers and herders struggling to plan ahead, even as the rates of temperature increase in the continent’s south have been among the world’s fastest.
Madagascar, off Africa’s southeast coast, has this year suffered from a crippling famine that scientists say is caused by climate-fueled drought.
More than a million people face extreme hunger in the island nation that has produced less than 0.01% of the carbon-dioxide emissions causing global warming, according to the Global Carbon Project.
Globally, weather-related natural disasters have increased five-fold over 50 years, the WMO said. More than 91% of associated deaths have occurred in developing countries.
Prime Minister of Fiji Frank Bainimarama told attendees at the initiative’s rollout that climate-driven superstorms, rising seas, and changing weather patterns are the “new norm” in the Pacific. He added that 13 cyclones have struck the island nation since 2016.
“Disaster readiness and disaster resilience are two sides of the same coin,” Bainimarama said. “They both depend on robust weather and climate data.”
(Reporting by Andrea Januta in New York, Kanupriya Kapoor in Singapore and Katy Daigle in Glasgow; additional reporting by Alessandra Prentice; editing by Janet Lawrence, Barbara Lewis and David Gregorio)
Photograph: In this photo provided by the Malacanang Presidential Photographers Division, houses are surrounded by floodwaters brought about by Typhoon Vamco inundate Cagayan valley region in northern Philippines on Sunday Nov. 15, 2020. Typhoon Vamco swelled rivers and flooded low-lying areas as it passed over the storm-battered northeast Philippines.
GLASGOW – As climate change triggers deadly heatwaves, droughts and floods, three U.N. agencies on Wednesday rolled out funding plans to improve weather forecasting in vulnerable countries.
The initiative, announced at the U.N. climate summit, aims to plug gaps in weather monitoring and data collection so developing countries can better prepare for possible climate-fueled disasters.
Over the next decade, organizers at the U.N.’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) plan to boost weather monitoring in 75 small island nations and least-developed countries that have done little to cause the climate crisis but face the biggest and costliest impacts.
“We have to invest in weather and climate services,” WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas told conference attendees. “Without observations we are not able to provide good services.”
“In modeling we say that if you put junk in your forecasting models you are getting junk out. Unfortunately that’s the situation in several developing countries and also several island state countries,” he said.
Improving rain forecasts, for instance, can help farmers manage their fields, communities manage water resources or governments plan for food imports when yields look likely to falter. They can also allow people to prepare for possible flooding.
For the Red Cross in Burkina Faso, such forecasts – when they exist – are crucial to the aid organization’s budget and procurement planning, Red Cross climate scientist Kiswendsida Guigma said.
But in many places, there is a “huge gap” in accuracy and detail, Guigma said. “We don’t have very dense networks of instruments collecting data, and (there is) a lack of human and technical capacity.”
The new initiative, called the Systematic Observations Finance Facility, is led by the WMO, the U.N. Development Programme and the U.N. Environment Programme and falls under global plans to provide $100 billion a year in climate financing to poorer nations.
Failure by rich nations to meet this 2020 goal has earned wide rebuke in Glasgow. On Tuesday U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said the world might meet that goal by 2022.
Improving weather data can also help with longer-term predictability around climate change, said Lars Peter Riishojgaard, director of the WMO’s Earth System Branch.
“If you’re a rural economy with subsistence farming, you need to know: Can people have their livelihoods where they are right now, or do they need to pick different crops?” Riishojgaard said. “If you can’t predict it, you can’t adapt to it.”
Disappearing Data
In recent years, weather data for Africa has declined as readings from weather balloons equipped with observation equipment – known as radiosondes – decreased by about half between 2015 and 2020.
Radiosonde data, which unlike satellite data is collected at various atmospheric altitudes, is crucial for both weather predictions and climate modeling. Lack of investment, security conflicts and other problems have prevented African countries from floating new balloons, said Columbia University climate scientist Tufa Dinku.
“There is almost no data outside the roads, outside the towns and cities,” he said. And “if you think about it, agriculture doesn’t happen in towns or cities.”
That has left African farmers and herders struggling to plan ahead, even as the rates of temperature increase in the continent’s south have been among the world’s fastest.
Madagascar, off Africa’s southeast coast, has this year suffered from a crippling famine that scientists say is caused by climate-fueled drought.
More than a million people face extreme hunger in the island nation that has produced less than 0.01% of the carbon-dioxide emissions causing global warming, according to the Global Carbon Project.
Globally, weather-related natural disasters have increased five-fold over 50 years, the WMO said. More than 91% of associated deaths have occurred in developing countries.
Prime Minister of Fiji Frank Bainimarama told attendees at the initiative’s rollout that climate-driven superstorms, rising seas, and changing weather patterns are the “new norm” in the Pacific. He added that 13 cyclones have struck the island nation since 2016.
“Disaster readiness and disaster resilience are two sides of the same coin,” Bainimarama said. “They both depend on robust weather and climate data.”
(Reporting by Andrea Januta in New York, Kanupriya Kapoor in Singapore and Katy Daigle in Glasgow; additional reporting by Alessandra Prentice; editing by Janet Lawrence, Barbara Lewis and David Gregorio)
Photograph: In this photo provided by the Malacanang Presidential Photographers Division, houses are surrounded by floodwaters brought about by Typhoon Vamco inundate Cagayan valley region in northern Philippines on Sunday Nov. 15, 2020. Typhoon Vamco swelled rivers and flooded low-lying areas as it passed over the storm-battered northeast Philippines.
Photo credit: Ace Morandante/Malacanang Presidential Photographers Division via AP.
Coal in Crosshairs as UN Climate Summit Brings Raft of Clean Energy Pledges
By Kate Abnett and Simon Jessop | November 4, 2021
By Kate Abnett and Simon Jessop | November 4, 2021
INSURANCE JOURNAL
GLASGOW – Government representatives at the U.N. climate conference in Glasgow on Thursday will turn their focus to tackling the global economy’s addiction to fossil fuels with a raft of new pledges aimed at curbing production and use of oil, gas and coal.
Planned announcements are meant to help speed a transition to cleaner forms of energy that scientists and world leaders say are needed quickly to slash greenhouse gas emissions and avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
But the pledges could also highlight lingering divisions between wealthy nations pushing for a swift end to the dirty fuels of the industrial revolution, and poorer developing countries that rely on coal and other fossil fuels to grow.
Among the announcements, Poland, Vietnam, Chile and other countries are expected to pledge to phase out coal-fueled power generation and stop building new plants in a deal the COP26 summit’s British hosts said would commit 190 nations and organizations to quit the fuel.
It was not immediately clear if the deal would involve countries like China, India, Indonesia and Turkey, which have numerous new coal power developments planned. In September, China said it would stop funding overseas coal plants, although the pledge did not cover domestic projects.
Separately, at least 19 countries plan to commit at the summit on Thursday to stop public financing for fossil fuel projects abroad by the end of next year, according to two people familiar with the talks.
More countries also may join the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance, led by Denmark and Costa Rica. That effort commits members to phasing out fossil fuel production within their own borders, but it will not formally be launched until next week.
A main aim of the COP26 talks is to secure national promises to cut greenhouse gas emissions mostly from coal, oil and gas, that are sufficient to keep the rise in the average global temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius. How to meet those pledges, particularly in the developing world, is still being worked out.
Coal fires around 37% of the world’s electricity, and a cheap, abundant local supply means the fuel dominates power production in countries including South Africa, Poland and India.
U.N. climate envoy Mark Carney said meeting international climate goals could cost around $100 trillion over the next three decades, and called on the finance industry to raise private money to complement what states can do.
On Wednesday, banks, insurers and investors with $130 trillion at their disposal pledged to prioritize combating climate change. World leaders this week also pledged to stop deforestation by the end of the decade and cut emissions of the potent greenhouse gas methane.
(Writing by Richard Valdmanis; editing by David Gregorio)
GLASGOW – Government representatives at the U.N. climate conference in Glasgow on Thursday will turn their focus to tackling the global economy’s addiction to fossil fuels with a raft of new pledges aimed at curbing production and use of oil, gas and coal.
Planned announcements are meant to help speed a transition to cleaner forms of energy that scientists and world leaders say are needed quickly to slash greenhouse gas emissions and avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
But the pledges could also highlight lingering divisions between wealthy nations pushing for a swift end to the dirty fuels of the industrial revolution, and poorer developing countries that rely on coal and other fossil fuels to grow.
Among the announcements, Poland, Vietnam, Chile and other countries are expected to pledge to phase out coal-fueled power generation and stop building new plants in a deal the COP26 summit’s British hosts said would commit 190 nations and organizations to quit the fuel.
It was not immediately clear if the deal would involve countries like China, India, Indonesia and Turkey, which have numerous new coal power developments planned. In September, China said it would stop funding overseas coal plants, although the pledge did not cover domestic projects.
Separately, at least 19 countries plan to commit at the summit on Thursday to stop public financing for fossil fuel projects abroad by the end of next year, according to two people familiar with the talks.
More countries also may join the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance, led by Denmark and Costa Rica. That effort commits members to phasing out fossil fuel production within their own borders, but it will not formally be launched until next week.
A main aim of the COP26 talks is to secure national promises to cut greenhouse gas emissions mostly from coal, oil and gas, that are sufficient to keep the rise in the average global temperature to 1.5 degrees Celsius. How to meet those pledges, particularly in the developing world, is still being worked out.
Coal fires around 37% of the world’s electricity, and a cheap, abundant local supply means the fuel dominates power production in countries including South Africa, Poland and India.
U.N. climate envoy Mark Carney said meeting international climate goals could cost around $100 trillion over the next three decades, and called on the finance industry to raise private money to complement what states can do.
On Wednesday, banks, insurers and investors with $130 trillion at their disposal pledged to prioritize combating climate change. World leaders this week also pledged to stop deforestation by the end of the decade and cut emissions of the potent greenhouse gas methane.
(Writing by Richard Valdmanis; editing by David Gregorio)
No comments:
Post a Comment