With the changing climate bringing in more and more frequent storms, floods and natural disasters, bringing fears along with them, 21 European countries have designed a unified weather alert system that provides simple information based on icon. It will be giving information on severe weather in 17 languages. And, one can get all these on a single web page — www.meteoalarm.eu.
Stating in a news conference, Tomas Molina, chairman of the International Association of Broadcast Meteorology told,
Our job is to save lives and goods, and this project was needed in Europe.
Backing the new system, experts suggest it to be simple and credible. It is because, on the rare occasions, when the system gives a red alert, people will take it seriously. Justifying the hurricane Katrina’s so high death toll, technical manager of Meteoalarm, Michael Staudinger said,
was because people refused to leave their homes.
Dieter Schiessl of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said,
Warnings are only useful if they are believed, understood and acted on.
With forecasting becoming ever more accurate, many countries often seem to lack a reliable means of warning the population. This new system generates hope of meeting this problem.