Dr. Mirianna Budimir is senior climate and resilience expert at Practical Action, and early warning systems lead for the Zurich Climate Resilience Alliance (ZCRA). Francisco Ianni is senior officer for climate resilience initiatives at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, and heat hazards lead for the ZCRA. Carolina Pereira Marghidan is a technical advisor at the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre.
Across the world, instances of extreme heat are occurring more frequently than ever. News of temperature records being shattered – all too often accompanied by reports detailing tragic loss of life – appear with frightening regularity. The threats posed by heatwaves are considerable, and due to the climate crisis are expected only to get worse.
It’s hard to think of any aspect of daily life unaffected by an extreme heat event. Health services quickly become overstretched; power systems buckle; and economic productivity grinds to a halt.
A new study by Mercy Corps in the rural region of Madesh in Nepal reveals the impact heatwaves are having on children’s education. “The classrooms feel like furnaces,” said one student. “The air is thick with hot air and foul smell of sweat, the walls trap the heat, and all I can think about is when I can escape.”
Scientists predict global warming of more than 1.5C for 2025-2029 period
Today is Heat Action Day, a global moment for raising awareness of heat risks. While we welcome and encourage the sharing of practical advice for staying safe, there’s so much more that needs to be done.
Knowing when and where these extreme heat events will occur is key to tackling the problem, and early warning systems hold enormous potential to reduce losses, suffering and death across the world. So why do they often fall short?
The fragmented landscape of heat warnings
Given the risks presented by heatwaves, and the relative ease of predicting temperature well in advance, over a hundred meteorological services – more than half of the global total – do provide warnings for instances of extreme heat.
However, many of these are informed solely by maximum temperature, and don’t capture prolonged, intense periods of heat. When the mercury refuses to drop for consecutive days and nights, the dangers are far greater.
This points to a bigger problem with heatwave warning systems: the lack of standardization. Analysis led by the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre has revealed stark inconsistencies in approaches to the monitoring, research and forecasting of heat across the world. This is in no small part due to the differing levels of capacity from region to region; but even the terminology varies wildly, with literally hundreds of definitions of extreme heat in use right now.
Then there’s an even greater concern, which is that many countries – particularly lower-income nations in Africa, Latin America, and parts of Southeast Asia – have no such warning system at all. As is too often the case, those most vulnerable to the risks are the ones with the least protection, with potentially lethal consequences.
Climate change-driven heatwaves hit Delhi’s Red Fort market traders
Break the silos to enhance resilience to heat
Closing these gaps requires the urgent scaling up of effective early warning systems for heatwaves. While national governments and donors have their part to play (particularly in the development and financing of low-cost solutions), improved coordination and cooperation at the global level would give these efforts a much-needed boost.
More standardization will certainly improve matters, and it is promising to see progress being made on this front. The World Meteorological Organization recently published a new definition for heatwaves, one that crucially captures their prolonged nature. In partnership with the World Health Organization, the WMO is also updating its decade-old guidance on heatwave warning system development. And a new handbook of extreme heat indicators, indices and metrics is expected later this year.
To continue this momentum, far greater transparency is required of all governments, institutions and organizations engaged in addressing heat-related risks. This should include the proactive sharing of knowledge, data and best practices, and collaborating wherever possible.
Low-income countries currently without protection from extreme heat events can use this information to rapidly build their capacity to assess their existing vulnerabilities, as well as develop and implement appropriate warning systems. Meanwhile, those already using such systems can make the necessary improvements to increase their effectiveness.
No one-size-fits-all solution for communities
A more coherent, coordinated approach to heatwave warning systems will be a massive step in the right direction. However, as with any such intervention, steps must be taken to avoid an overly top-down approach. If invaluable community insights go unheard, and potentially life-saving messages don’t reach the people they’re designed to help, we won’t see anything close to the levels of progress needed.
Only by taking a people-centred approach can the true potential of early warning systems be realized. Alerts need to be accessible and comprehensible to even the most remote and marginalized populations, and contain practical guidance informed by detailed, locally led risk assessments and response plans. The best way to do that is to ensure communities are active participants at every step of the process.
Women bear brunt of South Sudan’s heatwave made worse by climate change
One major flaw with the top-down model is that it rarely acknowledges how heat affects different people in different ways. Rather than issuing a blanket alert, early warning systems must target their messaging to those most at risk – be it pregnant women, elderly people, or outdoor labourers.
Where communities lack access to air-conditioned spaces and other opportunities for respite, that must also be taken into account. In every case, information on the likely impact of the heat, combined with guidance on how to mitigate it, is essential.
After over a decade enhancing resilience to floods around the world (including via warning systems), the Zurich Climate Resilience Alliance is applying the same community-centred approach to tackling heatwaves. In Pakistan, Senegal, the Philippines and more, we’re partnering with communities and national actors to conduct in-depth assessments and provide country-specific recommendations to enhance Heat Early Warning Systems.
No time to lose
By necessity, the world is beginning to act with more urgency to address the risks presented by heatwaves; but as life-threatening heat events increase in both frequency and intensity, we can’t afford to wait for the next heat-related tragedy before taking action.
This year, Heat Action Day falls on the opening day of the Global Platform For Disaster Risk Reduction in Geneva, at which Early Warning Systems will take centre stage. This is an unmissable opportunity to collaborate across continents and sectors, as part of a renewed commitment to a world in which all are protected from heatwaves and other climate hazards by effective and equitable early warning systems.
As temperatures rise, so too must our ambitions.
The post Early warnings for heatwaves can save lives – and we need them now appeared first on Climate Home News.
Early warnings for heatwaves can save lives – and we need them now
Vishal Prasad is director of Pacific Islands Students Fighting Climate Change.
When the International Court of Justice (ICJ) delivered its advisory opinion on climate change last year, it marked a turning point not just for the Pacific, but for international climate law.
The court was unambiguous: states have legal obligations to protect the environment from greenhouse gas emissions, and they face accountability when they fail. For those of us who carried this campaign from a classroom in Vanuatu to Europe and New York, it was a moment of profound validation.
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But we have always said that the advisory opinion was a tool, not an endpoint. The ICJ affirmed what many in the Pacific have been saying for some time. Now we have a legal blueprint, we must carry this momentum from the courtrooms to the negotiating rooms.
Potential to shape climate politics
The advisory opinion has already begun to reshape the climate landscape. At COP30 in Belém, we saw countries that had supported the campaign citing the opinion in their interventions, while those blocking progress were clearly concerned of its implications. Its potential to shape climate politics and policy is significant.
This year we have arrived at the mid-year climate negotiations in Bonn not only with the advisory opinion, but with a UN General Assembly resolution endorsing it. Despite a fierce campaign from the usual suspects, just eight countries, including the USA, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Iran voted against. That is a victory for multilateralism at a moment when multilateralism is under strain.
UN General Assembly backs “climate obligations” set by world’s top court
But we know that advisory opinions alone are not enough. Legal clarity will not automatically translate into reduced emissions, increased finance flows or stronger national climate plans. That translation requires political will in the negotiating rooms, both here in Bonn and all the way through Fiji and finally in Antalya this November.
What the Pacific needs from this negotiating year
The Pacific put significant political capital into the joint Australia-Pacific bid for COP31. It is fair to say that the compromise of Australia holding the role of president of negotiations while the COP is held and presided over by Türkiye is not what we imagined.
But we in the Pacific are used to looking for silver linings. Both Australia and Türkiye have acknowledged the important role the Pacific will have at COP31, through the appointment of Pacific champions and the hosting of a Pacific Pre-COP in Fiji with a leaders event in Tuvalu. These are genuine opportunities to bring the world to our shores and ensure that Pacific issues are front and centre going into the final negotiations.
But we are not naive. Envoy positions and meeting locations are just the architecture of goodwill. We need to see that goodwill converted into concrete negotiating outcomes and finance.
COP31 leaders unveil global targets, with spotlight on electrification
The Pacific helped put Australia’s climate minister Chris Bowen in this important position, so we expect to see Australia advocate not only for us, but to turn a mirror towards itself as one of the world’s biggest fossil fuel exporters.
At Bonn, and then in Antalya, we need ambition on mitigation that reflects the ICJ’s clarity on state obligations and the science. That means action on fossil fuels.
We need climate finance that is new, additional and accessible to the countries that need it most. In the Pacific we have already demonstrated what that looks like.
The Pacific Resilience Facility is the first climate finance facility designed, governed and managed by Pacific people, built specifically to reach the grassroots and community initiatives that larger funds routinely bypass. We need the international community to meet that ambition with contributions that reflect climate justice, starting with pledges to meet the $500-million capitalisation goal.
And we need the oceans – which are the lifeblood of the Pacific and a critical part of the global climate system – treated as a central element of the negotiations rather than a thematic aside.
Energy crisis driven by imported fossil fuels
The days of speaking about climate and fossil fuels purely as a moral issue are long gone. Pacific ministers recently adopted the Tassiriki Call for a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific, in the context of a deepening energy crisis that has triggered states of emergency in several Pacific nations. Our dependence on imported fossil fuels is both a climate and an economic vulnerability.
Conflict in the Middle East is pushing our region into an energy crisis. We are dependent on imported fossil fuels for 80% of our energy needs. My home country of Fiji could see an increased fuel bill of nearly three times our annual healthcare budget.
Comment: COP31 must persuade countries to make fossil fuel transition plans
We need the technical and financial support to transition to 100% renewable energy. Not only because it is what the world owes us for decades of carbon pollution that continue to render parts of our home uninhabitable, damaging ecosystems and culture. But because we must be part of that transition. Fossil fuels have proven to be the greatest source of damage to our climate, and with their volatility, to our sovereignty as well.
What next?
The demands have not changed. Greater action on mitigation, adaptation, finance, loss and damage: these remain the substance of what the Pacific requires from the international community. What has changed is the legal foundation beneath them.
The ICJ has affirmed that these are not requests. They are obligations. The task this year is to make the negotiations reflect that.
The post The Pacific made history in the courts – now we must do it in the negotiations appeared first on Climate Home News.
The Pacific made history in the courts – now we must do it in the negotiations
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In the shadow of Miami’s skyline, in water churned daily by boats and jet skis, juvenile great hammerhead sharks—a critically endangered species—spend the first two years of their lives. A few miles from downtown, researchers recently pulled a 12-foot critically endangered sawfish from the same shallows. The species has been dying off in alarming numbers across South Florida’s waters since 2024, in an event scientists suspect was set in motion by record ocean heat.
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