Geneva Meeting Seeks to Systematize Climate Change Data

A number of experts and politicians from around the world began a meeting on Monday in Geneva, Switzerland. The conference, WCC-3, aims to “ensure that the current and future generations have access to the climate predictions and information necessary for various socio-economic sectors to cope with climate variability and change,” said a bulletin from the organizer of the conference, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO.)

“Until now, the way that we deliver climate information to some sectors has been ad hoc,” explained WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud. “What we need is a formal system that all people can trust to access vital information that can save their lives and protect property and economies.

“The Global Framework will enable such a formalized system, by boosting the observations and research we have available for monitoring the climate and then facilitating the creation of sector- and regional-specific products and services that will be readily available to all who need it,” he added.

The conference participants are dedicated to providing “climate information and predictions to decision-makers in all countries.”By doing so they hope to “reduce losses caused by extreme weather and climate events such as heat waves, sand storms, cyclones, drought and floods.”

The bulletin pointed out that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [www.ipcc.ch] “projects that such extremes will become more frequent and intense as the climate continues to warm.”

Hans-Rudolf Merz, President of the Swiss Confederation, host country of WCC-3, noted: “Extreme weather events and changing climatic conditions affect all of us, frequently resulting in humanitarian disasters and heavy losses. The objective of WCC-3 is to avoid such disasters, and to provide public authorities with the required tools – precipitation forecasts, hazard maps, early warning systems and long-term environmental prospects. These forecasts have to be translated for decision-makers in their respective sectors like food security, water management, health care and tourism, for instance.”

“We are faced with an enormous, yet imperative, task – to lay the groundwork for all countries, all sectors, all people impacted by climate variability and change to take decisive actions to adapt to the changing landscape,” explained Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, United Nations Secretary-General’s Special Envoy on Climate Change. “We can not only rely on individual projects or individual agencies to undertake this task. The international community needs to unite to make science-based information on climate available to all.”

Source: World Meteorological Organization – http://www.wmo.int/wcc3