Excerpt from World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Press Statement from 4 September 2023.

A new Early Warnings for All Action Plan for Africa is one of the most ambitious and comprehensive initiatives ever launched to save lives and livelihoods on a continent which is regularly exposed to extreme weather and which bears a disproportionate socio-economic cost of climate change.

Floods, triggered by intense rainfall, affect many communities worldwide.  The extremely large floods in Pakistan in 2022, as well as other very large floods in Nigeria, Mozambique, and other countries, impacted many communities, affected their livelihoods, and triggered major losses. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), climate change will lead to increased precipitation in many regions, worsening the impacts of floods triggered by such precipitation.

Space-based information has been used extensively to contribute to disaster response efforts since several decades ago.  To enhance the use of such space-based information, since the year 2001, national space agencies from many countries have joined forces over the years to integrate the International Charter Space and Major Disasters as a mechanism to provide space-based information free of charge to national disaster management agencies and first responders in case of devastating disasters in all regions of the world.

Heatwaves, which can last for several days, impact societies and their livelihoods in many regions of the world. In August of the year 2003, a severe heatwave impacted Europe. According to the Meteorological Office of the United Kingdom (UK MetOffice), this particular heatwave was the worst one in the last 500 years (https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/learn-about/weather/case-studies/heatwave).