Early Warning Systems Defined - Reducing Disaster: Early Warning Systems for Climate Change - page 90

One component of that awareness, continual functioning, and embedding in its
social contexts, is that any EWS must serve multiple audiences. That is important
for vulnerability, because groups of people have different forms and degrees of
vulnerabilities and capacities. All communities have different groups with different
interests, meaning that no homogeneity amongst needs or knowledge can be
assumed in any community (Walmsley 2006 ). Ensuring that an EWS serves all sec-
tors of a community can be challenging, considering different ages, different gen-
ders (male, female, and non-traditional gender identities), people with mental and
physical disabilities, prisoners, homeless, and representatives of all religious, eth-
nic, caste, and cultural groups. People speak many languages and dialects. Visitors
to a community, such as tourists and businesspeople, might not speak any of the
local languages.

5.1.2 EWS for Creeping Hazards Including Climate Change

Because EWS must focus on vulnerabilities and be used in vulnerability reduction,
as part of the day-to-day lives of the people which it serves, EWS can function for
long-term, slow-onset hazards in addition to the quickly manifesting ones such as
earthquakes and tornadoes. Long-term hazards which can change baselines and
indicate trends are referred to as 'creeping changes'. In addition to climate change,
CEPs include soil degradation and drawdown of water supplies. These changes all
occur with small steps, yet cumulate into major problems, which are often only
recognised as being problematic once a specifi c threshold is crossed without know-
ing (Glantz 1994a , b ).
Climate change is one creeping change. Thresholds which climate change
appears to be heading towards include an ice-free Arctic Ocean in the summer, the
melting of permafrost, the contamination of atoll water supplies with saltwater due
to sea-level rise, and large-scale deaths of coral reefs. Other potential thresholds are
Antarctic or Greenland ice sheet collapses and the inundation of low-lying areas of
megacities such as London, New York, and Djakarta.
How do EWS function for creeping hazards such as climate change? There are
two main ways that traditional EWS could be applied, leading to a wider discussion
of what an EWS ought to be rather than what it has been traditionally.
First, climate change is not necessarily a hazard per se, but it signifi cantly infl u-
ences other hazards. Some hazards might become easier to deal with, while others
might become harder to deal with—or parameters might change in different ways.
For instance, Knutson et al. ( 2010 ) describe how climate change is likely to decrease
the frequency of Atlantic hurricanes while increasing the severity of hurricanes
which do form. Rainfall is expected to increase in volume and intensity in northern
Scandinavia, leading to worse fl oods, but less snowfall due to warmer temperatures
could lead to fewer blizzards—unless cold extremes increase even while the aver-
age temperature increases. The changes which climate change can bring to hazards
are complex!