Madrid (EFE) early warnings that save lives.
On the occasion of the celebration this Thursday of World Meteorological Day, which this year has the motto “The future of weather, climate and water through generations”, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has highlighted the importance of cooperation and contrast of data in its history, because “time, climate and water know no borders”.
For the WMO, which this year celebrates its 150th anniversary (1873), climate change is causing more extreme weather and climate phenomena such as heat waves, more intense rainfall and severe droughts, for which reason it has warned of the need to improve monitoring , prediction and communication of the climate in the future.
In Spain, Cayetano Torres, coordinator of Aemet’s Meteorological and Climatological Information area, has also stressed, on this day, the importance of raising awareness among all humanity about “the challenge posed by climate change”, and has warned of the urgency of being “aware that the planet cannot stop being habitable”.
“We have to do everything possible to try to make the world aware that we must abandon fossil fuels and lead a life that is not more austere, but more natural,” said Torres, for whom, far from advancing climate awareness, in the In recent months there has been a “big setback” in the main countries that export CO2 into the atmosphere.
In his opinion, said setback is “like a drifter in which only a few are rowing in the right direction and the rest either do not row or row in the opposite direction”, and this is now the biggest challenge facing the Humanity: “To make the entire planet aware of the need to change the energy model”.
Another key aspect of meteorology is forecasting and alert management: “A good forecast is useless if you cannot communicate it, especially in short-term forecasts,” explained Torres, who, however, regretted that the most vulnerable still lack early warning information.
Faced with this situation, the WMO is leading an initiative of “early warnings for all” -to be developed in the next 5 years with the support of the United Nations, development banks and the private sector, including large technology companies- and to guarantee the protection from all countries.
As significant data, today, more than 30 meteorological and 200 research satellites, 10,000 meteorological stations, 1,000 stations in altitude, 7,000 ships, more than 1,100 buoys, hundreds of meteorological radars and 3,000 specially equipped commercial aircraft measure throughout the world. planet atmosphere, land and ocean surface parameters.
Another field of great development in meteorology is artificial intelligence applied to this science -with numerical methods used today in both meteorological and climate models- and which have improved in recent years, providing more accurate weather predictions and climate projections.
At this point, Cayetano Torres has explained, for example, “machine learning” or automatic learning, a branch of artificial intelligence that makes it possible to quickly and effectively recognize patterns and structures related to atmospheric processes from the immense volume of data from weather satellites.
The use of artificial intelligence is going to mean a “very important qualitative leap” in all fields of this science, especially in the quality of the predictions, asserted Torres, who concludes that from Aemet they hope to be “great users” of these programs of computing.