GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – An 8.6 earthquake registered off the coast of Indonesia is raising fears throughout Indian Ocean nations of a major tsunami like the one in 2004 that killed tens of thousands of people. The Hindu in India reports that “the tremors were felt far and wide in southern and eastern parts of India, Sri Lanka, Australia, Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia.” Stuff in New Zealand says the quake was originally listed as 8.9, then downgraded.
The earthquake was registered at 431 km from the Indonesian city of Banda Aceh and tsunami watch alerts were issued.
View Larger MapThe Pacific Tsunami Warning Center has been issuing bulletins every half hour.
The Hong Kong Observatory, part of the Geneva-based World Meteorological Organization system, provided an early alert showing the location of the earthquake (above).
St Prex, Switzerland and Lake Geneva: -10 before noon, with an icy wind, 6 February 2012
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – If you’ve been talking to friends about our Arctic weather, you should revise your description, for in recent days it’s been warmer in Svalbard, far north in the Arctic, than in Milan, Italy or Istanbul, Turkey, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in Geneva. Svalbard has seen 5C in recent days while Milan can expect -10 by the end of this week.
We’re currently in a “negative Arctic Oscillation” in Europe, says the WMO, based on reports coming in from its members, national weather services around the world.
The Arctic Oscillation “is the difference in pressure between Polar areas and mid-latitude areas (where most of the population in Europe lives). At the moment there is a negative Arctic Oscillation, which favors cold conditions in Europe and relatively warmer conditions in the Arctic.”
Our glacial temperatures are not even setting new records. “The long duration of the cold period, its relatively late onset and the extent of the cold area are noteworthy but not exceptional. The continental cold air extended even over the Balkan peninsula; slight ongoing frost was recorded even in northern Greece” in the past three weeks.
Meanwhile, Svalbard but also much of North America has benefited from mild air moving over the North Atlantic northwards over Iceland up to the Arctic region, according to the WMO.
Seventh annual Greenhouse Gas Report 3 main gases continuing to rise
Aletsch glacier, seen from the Jungfrau in August 2011; Swiss researchers are tracking Alpine permafrost changes (photo ©2011 Ellen Wallace)
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Planet Earth’s three main greenhouse gases continue to rise significantly, says the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in Geneva.
It released the seventh annual World Greenhouse Bulletin Monday 21 November, showing that N2O, nitrous oxide, is now the third most important greenhouse gas, accounting for 6 percent of gases in the atmosphere. N2O plays an important role in the destruction of the stratospheric ozone layer which protects us from the harmful ultraviolet rays of the sun,” according to the WMO.
It is increasing far more rapidly than carbon dioxide (CO2), which accounts for roughly 80 percent and methane, roughly 18 percent.
The Bulletin “reports on atmospheric concentrations, and not emissions, of greenhouse gases. Emissions represent what goes into the atmosphere. Concentrations represent what remains in the atmosphere after the complex system of interactions between the atmosphere, biosphere and the oceans.”
Measurements are made by a network of stations in more than 50 countries which make up the WMO’s Global Atmosphere Watch Programme. The measurement data are quality controlled, archived and distributed by WMO’s World Data Centre for Greenhouse Gases, hosted by the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA).
World’s growing use of fertilizers, including manure behind N2O rise
Nitrous oxide “is emitted into the atmosphere from natural and man-made sources, including the oceans, biomass burning, fertilizer use and various industrial processes,” the report states.
“The atmospheric burden of nitrous oxide in 2010 was 323.2 parts per billion – 20% higher than in the pre-industrial era. It has grown at an average of about 0.75 parts per billion over the past 10 years, mainly as a result of the use of nitrogen containing fertilizers, including manure, which has profoundly affected the global nitrogen cycle. Its impact on climate, over a 100 year period, is 298 times greater than equal emissions of carbon dioxide.”
Northern permafrost loss a concern as methane levels rise again
Scientists are also concerned about the rise again of methane, after a period of temporary relative stabilization from 1999 to 2006, according to the report. “Since 1750, it has increased 158%, mostly because of activities such as cattle-rearing, rice planting, fossil fuel exploitation and landfills. Human activities now account for 60% of methane emissions, with the remaining 40% being from natural sources such as wetlands.” Researchers are looking into the reasons for the new increase, “including the potential role of the thawing of the methane-rich Northern permafrost and increased emissions from tropical wetlands.”
Carbon dioxide remains largest contributor to “climate forcing”
(CO2) is the single most important man-made greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. Monday’s report shows that it”
“contributes about 64% to total increase in climate forcing by greenhouse gases. Since the start of
the industrial era in 1750, its atmospheric abundance has increased by 39% to 389 parts per million
(number of molecules of the gas per million molecules of dry air). This is primarily because of
emissions from combustion of fossil fuels, deforestation and changes in land-use.
Between 2009 and 2010, its atmospheric abundance increased by 2.3 parts per million – higher than
the average for both the 1990s (1.5 parts per million) and the past decade (2.0 parts per million).
For about 10,000 years before the start of the industrial era in the mid-18th century, atmospheric
carbon dioxide remained almost constant at around 280 parts per million.”
Some improvement offset by other increases: CFCs
There is one bright spot in the report: some halocarbons are slowing decreasing, notably chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), widely used only a few years ago as refrigerants, propellants in spray cans and solvents but now widely banned. “However, concentrations of other gases such as HCFCs and HFCs, which are used to substitute CFCs because they are less damaging to the ozone layer, are increasing rapidly. These two classes of compounds are very potent greenhouse gases and last much longer in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.”
screen shots, new "my weather" worldwide service (source: Apple iTunes)
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the Hong Kong Observatory launched a new mobile app, “my weather”, Monday 10 October, designed to help travellers quickly find the official weather report for their area, anywhere in the world.
The new app features the World Weather Information Service (WWIS) and is the world’s first-ever location-specific weather service providing official city weather forecasts around the world for people on the move, says Geneva-based WMO.
The free app has location-based technology that detects the user’s location and it automatically displays the latest official weather forecasts and climatological information of the city nearest to the user.
“It provides a quick search function that allows users to obtain the latest official weather information from over 1,400 cities around the world. The application also enables users to create bookmarks for easy access to weather forecasts for cities of their choice in the future,” according to WMO.
The new app can be downloaded at http://itunes.apple.com/
Ed. note: I just downloaded and used it – up came Swiss, Italian and German cities, since it uses cities in a 200km range. Weather forecast is equally gloomy in all areas.
With luck, Irene is a name that will be used again
Hurricane Irene, 25 August - click on image to view larger (photo, Nasa/Goes)
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – This is the moment to hope that Irene doesn’t join retirees Katrina, Mitch and Tracy, storms that were so violent their names were taken off the Atlantic hurricanes list, according to Geneva-based WMO (World Meteorological Organization). Irene is currently battering the northern Bahamas as a category 3 hurricane and it is expected to move towards North Carolina by Saturday, after dumping 150-300mm of rain in the Bahamas, says to the US National Hurricane Center in Miami.
The storm centre is, for now, expected to miss Florida and Georgia.
Irene is the first storm of the season, which is expected to have 7 to 10 hurricanes. Three to five of those, says meteorologists in Geneva, are likely to be major hurricanes.
Irene’s name was selected from one of six lists used to name Atlantic tropical storms. The lists were created in 1953 and are managed by a WMO committee. Only women’s names appeared until 1979, when men’s names were added. The names are used on a rotating basis, unless a storm is so deadly that it must be retired, the case with Katrina, which caused enormous damage in New Orelans in the US in 2005 and killed nearly 2,000 people.
Igor and Thomas were retired in 2010 after they caused deaths and heavy damage. They will be replaced on the official lists by Ian and Tobias, available in 2016.
Nasa called Irene a major storm Thursday 25 August, saying its length is about one-third the length of the US coastline.
Met Office's model of expected ash drift Tuesday, by 18:00 UTC (20:00 Swiss time)
Update 00:02 GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Airports in Bremen and Hamburg, Germany, will be closed early Wednesday, the government announced, as Icelandic ash arrives in northern European air space. Scotland, which was most affected by the ash clouds Tuesday, expects its airports to be back to normal operations Wednesday.
The latest update on Icelandic ash heading towards Europe will be released in London at 18:00 UK time. Ash being spewed by Iceland’s Grimsvoetn volcano is being closely monitored for Europe by the Met Office in the UK, World Meteorological Organization members were told 24 May while meeting in Geneva. The Met Office is the Volcanic Ash Advisory Center for Northwest Europe, one of nine such centres throughout the world.
“The British Geological Survey (BGS) have described the eruption of Grímsvoetn that began over the weekend as a ‘significant eruption’ and the Icelandic Met Office (IMO) have reported ash continuing to be ejected to a height of 10km,” the Met Office said Tuesday morning in a press release.
“The movement of the ash plume will depend on how long the volcano continues to erupt and how weather patterns develop,” it noted, saying that while Scotland is expected to have some ash Tuesday, “further ahead, the outlook is very changeable with areas of low pressure likely to track across parts of northern Britain during the remainder of the week. This means that wind direction is likely to be quite variable.”
The eruption of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano in April 2010 caused widespread disruption to airlines.
Michel Jarraud, WMO secretary-general
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The World Meteorological Organization, meeting in Geneva, Tuesday 24 May named Michel Jarraud to a third term as secretary-general, until December 2015. Jarraud won in the first round of secret balloting, out of a field of three candidates, winning over Mehmet Caglar, director general of the Turkish State Meteorological Service and Geoff Love, director of WMO’s Disaster Risk Reduction department.
Jarraud has held the job sincee 2003
The WMO will elect a president and vice-president Wednesday from a field of candidates: David Grimes from Canada, Ali-Mohammed Noorian from the Islamic Republic of Iran, Tyrone Sutherland from the British Caribbean Territories, as well as first vice-president, Antonio Divino Moura from Brazil, second vice-president, Mieczslaw Ostojski, Poland, third vice-president, Abdalah Mokssit, Morocc.
The WMO is reviewing its programmes and priorities, and discussing the budget this week in committees. Decisions taken on a number of issues, including the proposed Global Framework for Climate Services, will be made in plenary sessions next week.
WHO headquarters in Geneva
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Geneva prides itself on its international role, but if you sense that the city’s native sons and daughters are outnumbered by foreign guests at the moment, you’re right. Runners, weather and climate specialists, world health workers have all converged on the city for three weeks of events.
Geneva Marathon has massive increase in runners
The Geneva Marathon races 14-15 May brought out 5,700 runners, a massive increase of 2,100 over the 2010 race, and they were cheered on by 47,000 spectators. This year’s Marathon for Unicef also saw a sharp increase in international participation, with runners from 191 countries. The winner of the men’s marathon was Ethiopian Hailu Begashaw, and Pascale Prevel from France won the women’s marathon. Geneva-based New Zealander Guy Simpson came in second in the men’s and Tsige Germa from Ehtiopia was third.
Weather and disaster preparedness the focus at Meteorological Congress
The World Meteorological Congress opens Monday 16 May and runs until 3 June. A key item on the agenda is a new recommendation to create a Global Framework for Climate Services. The recommendation was made last week, as part of a report and plan of action to help countries adapt to climate change, approved in Geneva during the Global Platform on Disaster Risk Reduction meeting.
World Health Assembly opens with several contentious issues on the agenda
Current La Niña episode started in June 2010, expected to die down over next four months
Milton Road, Brisbane, Australia January 2011 - part of a collection of Brisbane flood photos on flickr by Eric Veland: www.flickr.com/photos/erikveland
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in Geneva has published data confirming that recent heavy rains that led to flooding in Australia are linked to a La Niña “episode” that began in June 2010.
Areas including Australia and Indonesia that have already been affected are warned by forecasters to expect more unusually heavy rain for the next one to two months before the episode dies down.
The WMO is a United Nations organization, whose member countries’ national weather and meteorological services use it to work together.
The WMO says that “during La Niña episodes rainfall is increased across the western equatorial Pacific, including northern Australia and Indonesia during December-February and the Philippines during June-August”.
Below average sea level pressure and above average sea surface temperature in some areas, coupled with La Niña “have led to much above average rainfall in parts of Australia, Indonesia and southeast Asia. This La Niña situation is also believed to be linked to above average rainfall in southern Africa, below average rainfall in eastern equatorial Africa, and below average rainfall in central southwest Asia and southeastern South America.”
It is the opposite of El Niño, which brings unusually warm ocean surface temperatures.” Both events disrupt the large-scale ocean-atmosphere circulation patterns in the tropics and have important consequences for weather and climate around the globe. Once established, they typically last for 9 months or more,” according to the WMO.
2010 equal to 2005 and 1998, confirms global warming trend
Extreme weather events listed but no direct link made
Australian desert (photo: ©2010 Peter Brodbeck, flickr)
(video, El Niño, La Niña) Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Those who thought 2010 was hotter than usual were right: it was one of the warmest years on record, sharing the top hot slot with 2005 and 1998, the WMO (World Meteorological Organization) said in Geneva 20 January.
But if you were sitting in Scandinavia or the eastern US in December 2010 you’ll be right in thinking you’ve just experienced exceptional cold, with parts of Norway and Sweden having temperatures -10C below normal.
Eastern Canada and Greenland had unusually warm weather in December, however.
Higher temperatures did not affect the world evenly, but 2010 was exceptionally warm in much of Africa, southern and western Asia, Greenland and Arctic Canada, “with many parts of these regions having their hottest years on record” since the start of what the WMO calls instrumental climate records.
Greenland's snow and ice suffered from unusually warm weather in Decembe 2010
“The 2010 data confirm the Earth’s significant long-term warming trend,” WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud said in a statement. “The 10 warmest years on record have all occurred since 1998.”
The WMO is a United Nations organization that provides a place where member states’ national weather and meteorological services work together.
Arctic sea-cover at all-time low in December
Devastating floods in the Rio de Janeiro region in Brazil continue to take a high toll, with the number of deaths now well above 400 and expected to rise as rescuers find more bodies. Some 14,000 people are homeless and the country’s new president, Dilma Rousseff has promised US$400 million in aid to clean up and rebuild.
In other extreme weather news, Brisbane and the Queenlands area in Australia fear more rain is on the way, with a cyclone building up offshore while the massive damage from high waters of the past two weeks is assessed. Reuters reports that 12,000 homes have been destroyed and 118,000 buildings are without electricity. The World Meteorological Organization in Geneva, Switzerland 10 January confirmed that the heavy rains are part of the La Nina weather pattern.
In the Boston area and much of the rest of the northeastern US, heavy snows are threatening again, but schools and airports have re-opened after being closed for two days while the area dug itself out.
Links to other sites: Boston.com, Los Angeles Times, Reuters
Video, Boston.com
Meteoalarm: Germany has red danger zones Tuesday while Switzerland blissfully green
Early afternoon 13 July: drought and fire danger warnings for southern Alps in Switzerland (source: Meteoalarm/WMO)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch.com) – A beta version of a widget for a tropical storm warning system has just gone live for three locations in Asia and it will soon be available to other countries’ national weather systems, to adopt for their own storm alerts. The widget (ed. note: for Microsoft systems only) is being tested for Hong Kong, Macau and Guam, according to Geneva-based WMO (World Meteorological Organization), which is home to Severe Weather Information Centre (SWIC), of which the new service, SWIdget, is a part. SWIdget will allow local and international users to access nearly real-time data about storms, says the WMO.
The new service is complementary to a European-wide online service that provides an early warning service for severe weather in the region. If you think a storm is headed your way in Europe, you can check Meteoalarm online, the European-wide warning system
The new beta version service “aims to help users access severe weather warnings easily so that they can take suitable precautionary measures well in time,” says the WMO. It was developed by the Hong Kong Observatory on behalf of the WMO.
SWIC is a WMO website that provides official tropical cyclone information sourced from national weather and hydraulic offices in different regions of the world. It also provides official observation data around the world for heavy rains and thunderstorms.
SWIdget can be downloaded from the SWIC website.
Rapidly changing winter weather, Swiss Alps
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – “And now the mountain weather forecast for the next two minutes!” Such extremely short-term weather forecasting might be a thing of the future, but scientists are gathering and studying data in Vancouver, Canada to help them reach that point. The 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Canada are hosting one group of experts whose specialty is not a sport, but very short term weather forecasts, called “nowcasting”, which make predictions up to six hours before an event.
A team of scientists from nine countries assembled by the Geneva-based World Meteorological Organization and Environment Canada is conducting a weather research and development project called the Science and Nowcasting of Olympic Weather for Vancouver 2010, aka Snow-V10.
Nowcasting has already been used for Olympic Games, but in summer, at the Sydney 2000 Games and the Beijing 2008 Games. The prediction of winter weather in mountains is more difficult because conditions change rapidly with time and altitude.
Homeless Haitians, post-earthquake, have set up tents on a golf course (photo: ©2010 Marco Dormino/UN)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in Geneva Tuesday 9 February made an urgent plea for another kind of aid for Haiti: weather services. The organization points out that “the rainy season with flood risk is due in early April and the hurricane season begins in early June. In order to prevent potential disasters related to natural hazards, which the country is prone to, the capacity of Haiti to produce and disseminate weather information and warnings needs to be developed without delay.”
More than 90 percent of the disasters in Haiti “are linked to frequently occurring meteorological, hydrological and climate-related hazards,” says the WMO.
The country’s meteorological services have operated only partially since the 12 January earthquake, so other WMO member countries have been providing weather information.
Weather risks to civil aviation in WMO meeting
Geneva, Switzerland and Hong Kong, China (GenevaLunch) – The Geneva-based WMO (World Meteorological Organization) is bringing together about 150 national weather services experts for a week of meetings in Hong Kong, China, to review how to help the airline industry. Modern air travel is in need of more timely and more accurate weather data to improve safety, according to the WMO. The meeting, which starts 3 February, includes aeronautical meteorologists and aviation industry representatives.
Three-quarters of air traffic delays and almost half of the accidents to aircraft are weather-related. The probable increase of extreme weather events will increase the risk to aviation, argues the WMO.
WMO says temperatures up, also calls for drought indices
Click on image to view larger
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Climate change and global warming are under discussion in chilly Copenhagen this week, and in Geneva the World Meteorological Organization is contributing its share of scientific data to heat up the debate. The WMO late Tuesday published its latest report on global temperature changes, which shows that “2009 is likely to rank in the top 10 warmest on record since the beginning of instrumental climate records in 1850.”
Next stop, Nuuk. © 2008, Princess Cruises
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The breakup of Arctic pack ice due to global warming means an increasing number of icebergs drift into sea lanes in the North Atlantic, and 2009 was the eleventh most severe in that respect since 1912, the year the Titanic sank after colliding with an iceberg.
An growing number of ships are venturing into seas at latitudes and in months that were impossible before. This increases the risks and the opportunities to shipping, and the need for up-to-date information and well-trained crews, according to a report by the International Ice Charting Working Group (IICWG) which met in Geneva at the World Meterological Organization 12-16 October.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Eight countries in Central Asia and the Caucasus and five in Southeast Asia are implementing early warning systems to protect against weather-related events, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Today 14 October is International Day for Disaster Reduction, and the agency is highlighting how early warning and disaster risk reduction can save many lives when extreme weather strikes. Similar projects were introduced in seven southeast European countries in 2007.
These national and regional cooperation projects are part of a concerted programme that relies on technical expertise and funding provided by the WMO, the World Bank, UNDP and the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR).
“Natural hazards are a part of life. But natural hazards only become disasters when people’s lives and livlihoods are swept away…” (Kofi Annan, World Disaster Reduction Day, 2003)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The worst floods in decades in southern India have killed at least 250 people and left some 2.5 million people homeless. Aid workers from around the globe have “fanned out” across the region, reports the Press Association, to meet the urgent needs of people who only weeks earlier were suffering from severe drought. The torrential rains appear to have been caused by a low pressure zone over the Bay of Bengal and more rain is expected in the next 24 hours, say weather forecasters.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – One hundred forty deaths have been attributed to weekend flooding in the Philippines, drenched Saturday by tropical storm Ketsana, which dumped a record amount of rainfall: 410.6 millimetres in nine hours in the Manila metropolitan area. Ondoy, as the storm is called in the Philippines, submerged parts of the city and the Rizal area, affecting more than 400,000 people. The storm was heading late Monday Philippines time across the Sea of China towards Vietnam, but the WMO (World Meteorological Organization) in Geneva says the country is bracing for yet more rain. The rainfall is the most received in such a period since 1967.
Video,Associated Press
Links to other sites: CBS News
NSW, Australia 24 September 2009 dust storm (image: Australian Weather Bureau)
Qld, Australia, borders showing, dust storm 23 September 2009 (Image: Australian Weather Bureau)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Sydney, Australia is dusting itself off after gale-force winds dumped millions of tons of dust on it from the deserts west of the city, gumming up transportation systems, delicate machinery, people’s lungs and the view. The same winds are currently depositing thin films of dust in parts of New Zealand. Sydney is preparing for a second round of dust storms. Australia is not one of the countries currently implementing a new early warning system for sandstorms, which might have helped prevent some of the chaos, according to officials at the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in Geneva. “Until now, Australia has not been affected in a major way by this kind of storm,” a spokesperson explained to GenevaLunch.
“The reported level of suspended particulate mass (PM10) in highly populated Sydney was around 1,000 times higher than on a clear day,” said WMO’s specialist on sandstorms, Len Barrie.
Getting out while there's time
Complete coverage of the WCC-3 by GenevaLunch
Conference is 31 August – 4 September 2009
Updated: Jimena video below / Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Hurricane Jimena is moving in on Cabo San Lucas, the Mexican resort town in southern Baja California, packing 195 km winds. Hotel guests are huddled in their boarded-up rooms.
Mexican authorities are polishing evacuation plans for people most at risk from flooding and storm surges.
Reducing disasters risk: debate at the World Climate Conference in Geneva
The incredibly detailed information at hand to track Jimena and other major weather events like it is the result of a complex interplay of sources of information from the most obvious, satellite images in almost real time, to a range of what climatologists call observations from the ground. The satellite data is collated with radar images, barometric information, wind speed and temperatures that are carefully collected and evaluated. For storms such as hurricane Jimena, the infrastructure is in place and the information is at hand. The first challenge to the scientists is to make the data available quickly and in a useful way to people at all levels, in order for them to be able to make meaningful decisions concerning safety and well-being.
Gordon Shepherd, WWF international policy and Martin Sommerkorn, WWF Arctic research, at Geneva climate conference
Photo: Marco Tedesco, WWF
Complete coverage of the WCC-3 by GenevaLunch
Conference is 31 August – 4 September 2009
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – One-quarter of the world’s population is likely to be affected by rising ocean levels provoked by melting Arctic ice, a WWF study released 2 September shows. The Arctic is heating up at twice the rate of the rest of the Earth, the new Arctic Climate Feedbacks report shows. As a result, the level of oceans can be expected to rise by one metre by the end of the 21st century, twice as fast as current predictions suggest.
The report pulls together the most recent data covering the Arctic and its impact. It includes the ice sheets of Greenland and West Antarctica in global sea level projections, which were not included in the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) 2007 assessment of the Arctic, widely relied on. The addition of these areas appears likely to change temperature and precipitation patterns in Europe and North America, affecting agriculture, forestry and water supplies, the new data shows.
Photo: Marco Tedesco, WWF
The Arctic holds twice as much carbon as the rest of the world and the study indicates that as warming speeds up, carbon released by warmer soils could reach significant levels. Read more…
Geneva, Switzerland: third World Climate Change Conference 2009
Complete coverage of the WCC-3 by GenevaLunch
Conference is 31 August – 4 September 2009
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Small is increasingly seen as beautiful by climate experts, who say that making more information available about climate change at a local level is a key to helping the world adapt.
Leading specialists in the field, meeting at the World Climate Conference (WCC-3) which opened Monday 31 August in Geneva, are also putting the accent on developing countries, saying that while we all need more local information about climate change, these countries are in critical need of micro-solutions. These will be developed, however, only when appropriate, accurate, user-friendly weather information is available to them. Many developing countries lack even the most basic weather information, disseminated on a large scale.
© 2009 CICG
Complete coverage of the WCC-3 by GenevaLunch
Conference is 31 August – 4 September 2009
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The third World Climate Conference (WCC-3) promises “better climate information for a better future” but in the immediate short term it is expected to cause a severe strain on Geneva’s traffic and accommodations this week.
The World Meteorological Organization in Geneva hosts the one and only “official” weather forecasting site for cities around the world, with data provided by members of the WMO: the world’s national weather services. The site is offered in several languages, with Italian added in the summer of 2009. By July 2009 the weather for 1,321 cities was available.
Lake Geneva
Complete coverage of the WCC-3 by GenevaLunch
Conference is 31 August – 4 September 2009
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Geneva is home this week to a key global conference on how the world can adapt to climate change – disasters such as floods and hurricanes, but also the more subtle changes that affect agriculture, tourism and daily life.
The conference agenda is wide-ranging and includes improvements to early warning systems for disasters and how to provide more precise and more localized weather forecasting, needed by developing countries as well as industries in the developed world.
The meeting is hosted by Switzerland and organized by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and a group of partners.
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The heads of five international organizations have put their support behind an online global petition to world leaders to insist on a successful outcome to UN-led negotiations on climate change in Copenhagen Denmark in December 2009.
The organizations are: the World Health Organization, World Intellectual Property Organization, World Meteorological Organization, World Trade Organization and the Rome-based International Fund for Agricultural Development.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Swiss government will be pushing to strengthen Geneva’s role as the global centre for climate information when it participates in the Third World Climate Conference in Geneva 31 August to 4 September 2009. The conference will establish a system to improve the availability of climate information and predictions for government, the private sector, aid and other organizations.
Switzerland “considers climate information to be a key tool to strengthen society, particularly in developing countries, against the socio-economic consequences of climate change. Switzerland’s medium-term aim is to see the creation of the Global Framework for Climate Services and its embedding at the WMO (World Meteorological Organization). This would also serve to strengthen Geneva as a location for the coordination of future efforts in the dissemination of climate information,” Bern notes in a press release 25 June.
Jeremiah Lengoasa, World Meteorological Organization
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – A major effort to bring useful weather information to the people who need it in Africa was highlighted at the Global Humanitarian Forum (GHF) conference which opened in Geneva, Switzerland, 23 June. Five thousand mobile weather stations are to be deployed throughout Africa in the next decade, the GHF announced 18 June.
At today’s conference, World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) Jeremiah Lengoasa noted that traditional weather reports worked on a 300km scale of resolution, while farmers and fishermen required weather information on a 5-10km scale.
