The State of Early Warning Systems - Reducing Disaster: Early Warning Systems for Climate Change - page 117

• Lake and reservoir height variations and lake water level data (approximately
100 lakes worldwide) are provided by the United States Department of
Agriculture (USDA), in cooperation with the NASA and the University of
Maryland.
• Sea Height Anomaly (SHA) and Signifi cant Wave Height data is provided by
NOAA (available from altimeter JASON-1, TOPEX, ERS-2, ENVISAT, and
GFO on a near-real time basis with an average 2-day delay).
• Sea Surface Temperature (SST) products are available from NOAA's GOES and
POES, as well as NASA's EOS, Aqua and Terra.
• Monthly summary of the El Nino and La Nina Southern Oscillation, accompa-
nied by a forecast summary, probabilistic forecasts, and a Sea Surface Tempera-
ture Index, is provided by the International Research Institute (IRI) for Climate
and Society.

However, large parts of the world's most vulnerable regions are still not covered,
most systems do not provide warnings, and a comprehensive early warning system
is far from being operational. In 2009, at the World Climate Conference-3, 150
countries and 70 organizations have unanimously decided to establish a Global
Framework for Climate Services (GFCS). The framework will improve the produc-
tion and use of climate-related information by bringing together producers, research-
ers, and user organizations (WMO 2011 ). GFCS projects have been already
implemented in several countries around the world. Moreover GFCS exemplars to
illustrate how the application of targeted climate products could advance efforts in
several thematic areas have been developed for health, disaster risk reduction, agri-
culture, and water.

6.5 Overview of Multi-Hazard and Global EWS

Several multi-hazard global systems exist, such as WFP's (the UN food aid agen-
cy's) Humanitarian Early Warning Service (HEWS); AlertNet, the humanitarian
information alert service by Reuters; ReliefWeb, the humanitarian information
alert service by the United Nations Offi ce for the Coordination of Humanitarian
Affairs (UNOCHA); and GDACS (Global Disaster Alert and Coordination
System), a joint initiative of UNOCHA and the EC-JRC. These systems provide
information about several hazards: HEWS provides information on earthquakes,
severe weather, volcanic eruptions, fl oods, and locusts; ReliefWeb provides
information on earthquakes, tsunamis, severe weather, volcanic eruptions,
storms, fl oods, droughts, cyclones, insect infestation, fi res, technological haz-
ards, and health; AlertNet in addition also covers food insecurity and confl icts;
and GDACS provides information on earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions,
fl oods, and cyclones.