A recent review of information on weather-related disasters has revealed how inconsistent the availability of reliable data is, from country to country. And, as a result, scientists and researchers are facing challenges in assembling an international understanding of how different regions are being affected by the changing climate, according to an article in Bloomberg.
The missing data is most obvious with respect to heat waves, where only 11 heat waves are recorded for Africa for the period from 2000 to 2020. In comparison, roughly 80% of the reported heat wave-related deaths for the period of study tie back to only two incidents – the 2003 and 2010 heat waves in Europe.
With these gaps in data, the report’s authors are calling for improved global monitoring of events, particularly in low- and middle-income countries where monitoring has been lacking, with the goal of providing a better framework for both policymakers and planners, in deciding how to adapt to changing conditions.
Says Luke Harrington, co-author of the report and senior research fellow at the New Zealand Climate Change Research institute, to Bloomberg, “Having an awareness of the relative rates of change — how fast we expect things to change over the next couple of decades — is a really important thing when we’re weighing up the relative speed that we need to adapt as well.”
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