One of the most impactful, and most clearly visible, effects of climate change is the increasing rate and severity of extreme weather events. Recently, there has been a new push for expansive early warning systems that will allow for detection of major events across the entire world. Currently, there is a third of the global population that is not covered by the warning systems, and the overwhelming majority of the whole continent of Africa does not have any coverage. The United Nations has recently announced that they plan to get these widespread detection systems operating within the next five years. Over the past fifty years, there has been one extreme weather event somewhere on the globe every single day. While these events are beginning to increase both in frequency and severity, this could not be detected based solely on the number of deaths due to severe weather, since that is going down because of the advanced warning that weather warning systems are able to provide.
The problem is that while this coverage and early warning has been proven to be effective where it is readily available, it is not accessible in all areas of the world. The warning system in the United States is very effective, as was shown when Hurricane Ida hit Louisiana in 2021. It killed less than 1oo people despite being the fifth strongest storm on record to hit the United States. The massive storm had sustained winds up to 150 mph and was just shy of reaching Category 5 level severity. This shows the progress that has been made with the early warning systems and how helpful they can truly be in order to predict weather events and take appropriate precautions and evacuations.
However, Cyclone Idai in 2019 was a massive disaster that killed almost one million people in Africa, mostly in the regions of Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Malawi. It is considered to be one of the worst severe weather events to ever hit the Southern Hemisphere and its effect on the people in the region was catastrophic. At least 1.7 million people were in the direct path of the cyclone in Mozambique and just below one million in Malawi. Cyclone Idai and Hurricane Ida are two storms that are extremely comparable, with similar sizes and similar wind strengths. Both of them wrecked havoc when they struck land, destroying buildings and homes and resulting in severe flooding. The one major blaring difference between the two is the death toll, and this can be directly attributed to the advanced warning technology that exists in Lousiana but not in Mozambique. While in the US people were given advanced notice of the storm and were able to evacuate and get to safety, the majority of Africa is not currently covered by these sensing technologies, which accounts for the massive discrepancy in death toll between the two.
The United Nations’ push for the early warning weather systems is something that will, unfortunately, become more and more necessary in years to come as extreme weather events become more severe and more frequent. As the temperature of the ocean increases and therefore warms the air just above the surface, more air will rise and lead to convection over the water that is in the prime condition to create and fuel dangerous storms like hurricanes, cyclones, tropical storms, blizzards, etc. However, if the widespread systems follow the trends that have been shown thus far in their areas of coverage, the number of total deaths due to severe weather might be able to decrease even further than it already has. As shown by the effects of Hurrican Ida versus Cyclone Idai, this advanced warning technology has the ability to save millions of lives. Although the exact impact of climate change on severe weather is unknown and cannot easily be predicted, it is a good sign that scientists are becoming more and more accurate in their prediction and detection of the storms and that preventative measures are being taken in order to save lives.
I definitely think this is such an important topic, especially because we have seen firsthand the adverse effects of harsh weather conditions. Implementing these systems would be crucial in disaster planning, especially when accounting for minority and vulnerable communities. Hurricane Katrina for example shows how better planning could have saved low-income and minority communities from not only facing the harsh weather but the social and economic effects that come after.
This is such an important thing to talk about that I think a lot of people don’t anything about, including myself before reading this post. I really like how you put the comparison between the two storms in there and how similar the actual storms were but just how different their effects on people were. That was very helpful to put into perspective just how much improvement is needed in other countries’ weather systems and just how important these systems are in the first place. It’s scary to think about how the storms and disasters are only getting worse because of global warming, making these weather systems even more important to get soon everywhere.
I think that even creating a Weather Warning System effective in Africa wouldn’t be enough to help the country. Africa is a continent that lacks in technologies that we have here in the United States, so even if we implemented a successful warning system, we would have to increase technology in other areas as well. For instance, a lot of people in the United States are aware of the weather advisories because of our access to the internet through smart devices and service provided by companies, such as Verizon and AT&T. More service providers would have to implement their services in Africa and people would need ways of accessing the internet, whether that be through a computer, phone, or any other device.