COP26: how plugging data gaps will transform our response to climate change
- The creation of a major new initiative by three UN agencies will close the gaps in data undermining our understanding of the climate and extreme weather
- The system will enable the world’s most vulnerable communities to get ahead of the curve, adapt to the effects of climate change and build resilience
The World Meteorological Organization has highlighted how greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reached a record high in 2020. It found that concentrations of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere rose at a faster rate in 2020 than over the previous decade.
But amid this pessimistic news, there are reasons to be hopeful. The number of countries that have enhanced their climate pledges or intend to do so rose from 75 in 2019 to 178 in 2021. Most have abided by the key principle to submit increasingly ambitious contributions every five years.
The Systematic Observations Finance Facility (SOFF) will plug the data gaps that undermine our understanding of the climate, including the prediction of extreme weather events. These in turn weaken the response to such things as floods, hurricanes and drought.
We have not been able to fill significant data gaps in the past three decades, and the situation continues to deteriorate. For example, in Africa, the number of radiosonde observations – the most important type of data for weather predictions and climate analysis – decreased by about half between 2015 and early 2020. The figure has dropped further since. The same worrying trend is seen in other parts of the world.
Just a few days ahead of COP26, the World Meteorological Congress approved an integrated package to the explosive growth in the demand for weather and climate data to support essential services needed by all sectors of society. It includes a unified data policy, the Global Basic Observing Network and the SOFF.
The network was designed to address the gap in the observational data coverage. It specifies in clear, quantitative terms which parameters to measure, how often, at what horizontal and vertical resolution, when and how to exchange them and which measurement techniques to use. Hammering out these technical details was a point of arrival.
With the creation of the SOFF, we have reached another milestone. We are supporting countries to comply with Global Basic Observing Network requirements, creating an optimal global system and allowing all countries to better understand, predict and adapt to the changing climate.
It is simple logic – by making our database more complete, we improve planning assumptions for all. By creating a system for better data sharing, we ensure the weakest links are strengthened.
The good news is that the international community has recognised the transformative value of the SOFF. At COP26, an initial group of countries will announce an opening investment to help get the facility off the ground. This will allow us to move into a fully operational phase in six months.
Potential global disaster management benefits enabled by the SOFF are estimated at US$66 billion per year. The estimated annual benefits of improved economic production through the application of weather forecasting in weather-sensitive sectors such as agriculture, water, energy, transport and construction are around US$96 billion.
Weather and climate observations of the sort the SOFF will produce are essential if the world community is to realise the more than US$160 billion annually in socioeconomic benefits of weather and climate prediction.
Petteri Taalas is secretary general of the World Meteorological Organization. Achim Steiner is administrator at the UN Development Programme. Inger Andersen is executive director at the UN Environment Programme