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STORY: WMO / WORLD METEOROLOGICAL DAY
TRT: 2:58
SOURCE: WMO
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGE: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 23 FEBRUARY 2022, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND / FILE
23 FEBRUARY 2022, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
1. Wide shot, WMO building
2. Close up, WMO logo
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Petteri Taalas, Secretary-General, World Meteorological Organization (WMO):
“Everyone should care for early warning services and early action. We have started seeing a growing amount of disasters, and by having proper early warning services, we can protect lives. We can protect the property and also infrastructures and biosphere. Therefore, ‘Early Warning and Early Action’ is so vital.”
FILE – WMO
4. Wide shot, a woman and a man working in a rice field in Southeast Asia
5. Aerial shot, highway, city infrastructure
6. Aerial shot, forests, and rice fields in Southeast Asia
23 FEBRUARY 2022, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
7. Close ups, white flowers in a botanical garden
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Petteri Taalas, Secretary-General, World Meteorological Organization (WMO):
“We need a constellation of observations to be able to run these early warning services. We need local Ground-Based observations, which are very accurate, describing the local weather conditions. Then, we need balloon soundings to get the vertical profile of the atmosphere. Nowadays, we are also using aircraft. Many airline companies are having meteorological instruments on board. Then, we have satellite programs which are provided by mainly our big members, and also European countries have joined the joint venture. You need all of those as an input to these weather forecasting models. If you don't have, for example, the local Ground-Based observation, the quality of the forecast remains poor. That's the situation, unfortunately, in some of the regions worldwide, for example, in Africa, Caribbean and Pacific Islands, we have too limited the observation networks, and that's having a negative impact on the accuracy of weather forecasts. This lack of observations is having global impact.”
FILE – WMO
9. Aerial shot, satellites
10. Aerial shot, woman holding a balloon
11. Wide shot, airplane, and its meteorological instrument
12. Aerial shot, satellite
13. Wide shot, ground observational stations
14. Wide shot, African desert area
15. Aerial shot, islands in the Pacific area
23 FEBRUARY 2022, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
16. Wide shot, pond, and pampas grass in a botanical garden
17. SOUNDBITE (English) Petteri Taalas, Secretary-General, World Meteorological Organization (WMO): “For WMO, it's very important that all of our members have proper observing systems and they have also proper early warning systems. Only half of our members have a state of the art early warning services. We have created the financing mechanism called SOFF, a systematic observation financing facility to enhance the amount of stations in those data sparse areas. And we are lucky that quite many countries have already shown interest to finance this activity, and we expect that we will see more donor countries coming on board, and that will be beneficial for less developed countries, but it will be beneficial for all of our members.”
18. Close up, pampas grass in a botanical garden
FILE - WMO
19. Aerial shot, ground observational stations
20. Med shot, woman, working with a meteorological instrument
21. Med shot, woman, working with a meteorological instrument
23 FEBRUARY 2022, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
22. SOUNDBITE (English) Petteri Taalas, Secretary-General, World Meteorological Organization (WMO):
“We have been talking a lot about climate mitigation to reduce the emissions of especially carbon dioxide and also methane to protect us and to mitigate climate change. But it's also very important to pay attention to climate adaptation because this negative trend in climate will continue for the coming decades anyhow, meaning increasing amount of disasters and weather extremes and sea level rise and the melting glaciers may continue for the coming hundreds of years. And one very powerful way to adapt to climate change is to invest in early warning services. And WMO is helping donor organizations to invest in the early warning skills of our members.”
FILE – WMO
23. Aerial shot, foggy city landscape
24. Aerial shot, smoking forests
25. Close up, man looking at a weather map
26. Med shot, weather map
27. Aerial shot, flooded area
28. Wide shot, people walking in flooded area
29. Aerial shot, glaciers
23 FEBRUARY 2022, GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
30. Close up, Sakura branch
31. Wide shot, zen garden
32. Wide shot, shrine gate
33. SOUNDBITE (English) Petteri Taalas, Secretary-General, World Meteorological Organization (WMO):
“I would like to wish you all a very happy World Meteorological Day. “
34. Wide shot, Taalas walking away
In a message on World Meteorological Day, WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said, with the growing number of disasters, “everyone should care for early warning services and early action” which could protect lives.
23 March 2022 marks World Meteorological Day, with the theme ‘Early Warning and Early Action.’
The head of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), Petteri Taalas, said warning services could protect lives, property, infrastructures, and biospheres.
WMO said more people are exposed to multiple hazards that frequently cascade together to create the perfect storm. The Organization said forecasts of what the weather will be are no longer enough; instead, what is needed is to forecast what the weather will do and, more importantly, what people should do. WMO said this is vital to save lives and livelihoods.
WMO added that one in three people are still not adequately covered by early warning systems, and, all too often, the warnings do not reach those who need them most.
SOUNDBITE (English) Petteri Taalas, Secretary-General, World Meteorological Organization (WMO):
“We need a constellation of observations to be able to run these early warning services. We need local Ground-Based observations, which are very accurate, describing the local weather conditions.” Then, we need a balloon soundings to get the vertical profile of the atmosphere. Nowadays, we are also using aircraft. Many airline companies are having meteorological instruments on board. Then, we have satellite programs which are provided by mainly our big members, and also European countries have joined the joint venture. You need all of those as an input to these weather forecasting models. If you don't have, for example, the local Ground-Based observation, the quality of the forecast remains poor. That's the situation, unfortunately, in some of the regions worldwide, for example, in Africa, Caribbean and Pacific Islands, we have too limited the observation networks, and that's having a negative impact on the accuracy of weather forecasts. This lack of observations is having global impact.”
WMO said early warning services depend on a constellation of observations, on land, at sea, in the air, and in space. Still, there are many gaps in essential weather and climate observations, especially in the Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States. The Organization stressed that this is a serious problem as this data is the basis of all-weather forecasts and climate services.
SOUNDBITE (English) Petteri Taalas, Secretary-General, World Meteorological Organization (WMO):
“For WMO, it's very important that all of our members have proper observing systems, and they have also proper early warning systems. Only half of our members have a state of the art early warning services. We have created the financing mechanism called SOFF, a systematic observation financing facility to enhance the amount of stations in those data sparse areas. And we are lucky that quite many countries have already shown interest to finance this activity, and we expect that we will see more donor countries coming on board, and that will be beneficial for less developed countries, but it will be beneficial for all of our members.”
WMO has created with UNEP and UNDP a financing mechanism called SOFF – The Systematic Observations Financing Facility. SOFF will support developing countries, focusing on Small Islands Developing States and Least Developed Countries, to enable them to generate and exchange essential weather and climate data. By filling these data gaps, WMO said SOFF will lead to significant improvement in better weather forecasts, early warning systems, and climate information at a critical time when impacts of climate change are intensifying. WMO underscored that the implementation of SOFF will benefit everyone and will have a life-saving impact in the most vulnerable countries, where decades of progress can be wiped out by single extreme weather or climate event.
SOUNDBITE (English) Petteri Taalas, Secretary-General, World Meteorological Organization (WMO):
“We have been talking a lot about climate mitigation to reduce the emissions of especially carbon dioxide and also methane to protect us and to mitigate climate change. But it's also very important to pay attention to climate adaptation because this negative trend in climate will continue for the coming decades anyhow, meaning increasing amount of disasters and weather extremes and sea level rise and the melting glaciers may continue for the coming hundreds of years. And one very powerful way to adapt to climate change is to invest in early warning services. And WMO is helping donor organizations to invest in the early warning skills of our members.”
