The World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) forecasts countries within west Africa would face severe drought in a year. It has selected the region for its pilot project — a new climate monitoring system scheduled for launch in October.
The system will determine and record reliable climatic data essential for prediction of changes in the weather conditions by the organisation.
The information will be important for managing natural disasters, food and health security, WMO says.
According to Jan Egeland, co-chair of the High-level Taskforce for the Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS), a WMO initiative, some 70 countries have inadequate infrastructure to monitor weather changes while six have no data at all.
The pilot project is currently being undertaken in Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali and Niger.
Just before the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20), Egeland told a WMO sitting in Brazil on June 15 that climate services don’t get to the last mile, to those that need it the most.
According to FAO, 80 percent of Africa’s population comprises smallholder farmers who depend on climatic conditions to farm therefore such information will also be a boost for their production.
As Egeland praised science for making strides in making available data to forecast uncertainties,WMO’s Climate and Water Department acting director Mannava Sivakumar blamed the lack of infrastructure, poor meteorological networks and inadequate skilled meteorological personnel in low developed countries as the cause of the information gap.
He said an increasing gap in climate services between developing and developed countries currently exist. According to him, most developing countries currently lack good climate services.
Stressing the need for open access to climate change information, Elina Palm, liaison officer at the UN International Strategy for Disaster Reductionargued that it was “very important”, that people should have access to the information and understand.
“They should however be empowered to take action in case of such unfortunate incidences,” Palm said.
In 2008 Cuba’s destructive cyclones, radar technology was used to warn people. The technology helped save thousands of lives although US$9 billion worth of assets was lost.
The experts claim the system will need to better climate information which will even help predict and manage health epidemics such as malaria,cholera apart from the natural uncertainties.
