COP31: Getting Ahead of the Storm

Texas Impact is on the ground in Antalya, Türkiye, at the United Nations climate negotiations known as COP31. Each day, Texas Impact staff and other U.S. faith delegates are reporting on the proceedings, and sharing conversations with global colleagues about the state of play and the urgency of the moment. Find more coverage at austinchronicle.com/COP31.

The UN Climate Negotiations opened this week with sessions dedicated to a topic familiar to most Texans, improved monitoring of weather and climate conditions as a way of preparing for future hazards. Monitoring is increasingly necessary for understanding the impacts of climate change on various parts of the earth system, like the cryosphere and oceans. But its most important function is to support decision-makers in giving the public advanced warning about imminent climate hazards.

The connection between meteorological monitoring and risk communication is familiar to us in the United States. At the beginning of the current presidential administration, the president signed executive orders and took other measures to reduce the monitoring capabilities of scientific organizations like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), believing that those data only mattered for climate change research. Pushback from meteorologists across the country was fierce, pointing out that those high quality data networks feed the computer models we need to predict everything from whether it will rain on your daughter’s soccer game to whether drought will continue to affect the agricultural productivity of an entire region.

The question of data networks came up again during the deliberations of the Special Committee on Disaster Preparedness and Flooding after the July 4, 2025 floods in the Texas Hill Country. Committee members grilled the director of the Upper Guadalupe River Authority for hours about the organization’s decision to forgo additional monitoring equipment due to funding constraints. The state then granted tens of millions of dollars to the project of improving monitoring systems and forecasting capability in the state in hopes of giving residents timely and actionable warnings for dangerous conditions in the future.

Scientific researchers and meteorologists around the world are bumping up against the same problems as the Committee on Disaster Preparedness and Flooding did. Money. Who pays for better monitoring? Who maintains the infrastructure? And how do we connect that data to warnings that help people take action to protect themselves from hazards?

As climate impacts worsen, it is more important to monitor the earth system than ever before. The scientific community, through institutions like universities and research centers, and government agencies, maintain instruments around the world that provide more than 800 million pieces of data per day. These measurements come from remote sensing systems like satellites and radar, and from in-situ measurements, like thermometers, anemometers, and soil moisture sensors.

Some countries have more robust monitoring systems than others. The United States has historically had among the best earth system monitoring systems in the world. NOAA maintains satellites, buoys, towers, and other systems over a large geographic area. We make that data available free of charge to other scientists and to stakeholders in industries like fishing, emergency planning, and agriculture.

But not every country is able to maintain a robust system. Dr. Florian Pappenberger, Director General at the European Center for Meteorology and Weather Forecasting pointed out in a panel at COP31 that we need many more observations, but that not all new observations are created equal. We need observations in places where we currently don’t have the density needed to do high quality monitoring. The most impactful place we could expand weather and climate modeling today is in the tropics and in Africa.

One part of the world that is experiencing rapid warming has developed a robust system of monitoring of the atmosphere, cryosphere, and land environments. The Hindu Kush Himalaya Regional Information System provides high resolution rapid updates on not just scientific variables, but also human factors and ecosystems and more. That region has experienced a temperature increase of more than 2.5°C above pre-industrial levels. That is also the region that experienced one of the most devastating climate impacts of the year, the glacial outburst flash flood that killed more than a thousand people in Nepal.

Joanna Post of the Global Ocean Observing System said that cost remains a barrier to scaling up climate monitoring. Observing systems in Europe alone cost about a billion dollars per year to maintain. But we can use existing systems better by improving coordination between networks and countries. Many countries have useful and high quality data, but need better ways to integrate that with other countries, said Thelma Krug, of the World Meteorological Association’s Global Climate Observing System.

Several panelists expressed concern that many of our most valuable observation networks are monitored by a single country. They called this arrangement a single point of failure and called for the development of multilateral networks responsible for funding and maintaining instrument networks around the world. Some of the networks we rely on the most are vulnerable in this way, including networks that monitor ocean heat content, global energy imbalance, and sea ice extent.

Ocean heat content measurements came up during a Tuesday session on monitoring the El Nino-Southern Oscillation cycle. Increased monitoring of the ENSO cycle allows scientists to issue warnings about changing conditions so that impacted countries can prepare. Professor Peter Thorne, Deputy chair of GCOS reiterated the need for multilateral climate finance to ensure continuous operation of these crucial services.

ENSO forecasts are used to develop anticipatory actions, said Greg Puley, Chief of CLimate and Innovation, UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. These arrangements are made by countries who know they will experience impacts from a very strong En Nino like the one that is currently developing in the Eastern Pacific. Anticipatory action plans are created by governments to give the country time to prepare for coming impacts. The plans are backed by climate finance and are triggered by changing oceanic conditions. One example is an anticipatory action plan in Sri Lanka. When the government of Sri Lanka became aware of the anticipated strong El Nino, this triggered their anticipatory action plan and associated finance, enabling them to shore up irrigation systems and other infrastructure that will allow them to be more resilient to a coming El Nino-driven drought.

These plans are designed to be engaged ahead of a hazard, rather than responding to the disaster after it happens. This is a wiser use of resources and also reduces suffering and disruption.

Malama Mwila, Senior Child Rights Advocacy and Campaigns Advisor for East and Southern Africa region, Save the Children International spoke to the urgency of scaling up earth system monitoring, risk communication, and preparing for climate hazards.

Africa is a very young continent, he said, with a median age of about 19, compared with Europe’s median age of 43. Because Africa experiences a disproportionate amount of climate impacts, the climate crisis is having its greatest impact on children and young people. Nelson Mandela said that the measure of a society is the way it treats its children. The world is failing our children, especially children in Africa. For them, a drought driven by climate change and El Nino is not just a drought. It’s the loss of family income, food, and education. About 8 million children could face acute hunger across Africa. We need child-centered climate forecasting and risk forecasting.

Texas Impact is Texas’ oldest and largest interfaith advocacy network. Based in Austin with members in every corner of the state, Texas Impact equips and mobilizes Texans of faith and conscience to advocate for public policies that reflect widely shared, deeply held values of love and justice. Learn more and get involved at texasimpact.org.

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