The WeatherPod (7 – 12)

With a population of more than 1.2 billion, the African continent faces many weather and climate induced challenges including flooding and droughts, permanent changes in water supply, impacts on agriculture and food, on human health, on shelter and whole ecosystems. Greater water scarcity, more infectious diseases, and worsening food insecurity is increasing the vulnerability of a population already at risk.

Jerry has served as the Deputy Secretary General of the World Meteorological Organization and twice as the Chief Executive of the South African Weather Service. At the South African Weather Service, he managed the transition of the organisation from being part of a government department to a stand-alone agency supporting both public tasks and commercial services. He studied at the University of Witwatersrand where he completed a master’s degree in public and development management and an MA in synoptic climatology of Southern Africa.

Makoto Suwa is a Senior Disaster Risk Management Specialist at the World Bank. He leads and supports a wide range of World Bank activities and projects that aim to strengthen weather, climate, and hydrological services in Africa. Prior to joining the World Bank, Makoto worked for the World Meteorological Organization, at both its headquarters in Geneva and its Regional Office for Eastern and Southern Africa in Nairobi. He also taught at Kigali Institute of Science and Technology and Lycée de Kigali in Rwanda, and briefly worked for the Japan International Cooperation Agency’s Office for Climate Change in Tokyo. Makoto holds a Ph.D. in climate science from Princeton University and a master of environmental management degree from Duke University.

She obtained a BSc (1999) and PhD (2003) in Geography from the University of Bristol, UK. She then worked at the European Commission Joint Research Centre in Ispra, Italy on the European Flood Alert System and then from 2004 lectured at the Department of Geography at King’s College London, UK. In 2012 she moved to the University of Reading; to a joint post between the Department of Geography and Environmental Science and the Department of Meteorology.

Hannah works closely with partners including the UK Environment Agency, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF), the UK Met Office, the Red Cross Climate Centre & other hydrometeorological services and humanitarian actors. She advises government, forecasting authorities and humanitarian agencies on national and international flooding incidents and forecasting science and provides expert commentary in the media.

Peter, from Belfast Northern Ireland, is uniquely qualified to talk on this topic. From 2011 to 2020 has was the Chief Executive of the New Zealand Meteorological Service which was established as a state-owned enterprise on 1 July 1992.

This came about mainly as a result of pressures also being faced by an increasing number of national meteorological services – chiefly, the pressure to earn money on their activities rather than rely entirely on taxpayer funding.

But does such a change in status from a straightforward public service to a commercial enterprise charged with earning money on its services pose any problems or contradictions? For example, is the the requirement to issue public weather warnings or to provide national security support compromised as a result?

These are some of the key issues we discuss with Peter.

About the WeatherPod
Alan Thorpe is an atmospheric scientist who has worked as a Professor of Meteorology, as head of the UK Met Office’s Hadley Centre and, most recently, as Director General of the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts.

David Rogers is an oceanographer turned meteorologist, a former Chief Executive of the UK Met Office and now a consultant with the World Bank helping countries improve their weather, hydrological and disaster management systems and services.

Weather information is an international resource critical to saving lives, making business and society more efficient, and building resilience to the growing impacts of extreme weather & climate change.

Each month, WeatherPod will explore how the public, private and academic sectors – which make up what’s informally called the Global Weather Enterprise – co-operate to produce weather information and make it widely available. It will also examine how weather affected public and private enterprises actually use it.

Extreme weather often impacts the poorest the hardest. So the WeatherPod will look beyond the wealthier countries to the poorer and less developed ones – which host most of the world’s population – to examine how the rich and poor use weather & climate information – the differences, the things in common, and the lessons we can learn from each other.

In each episode Alan and David will invite a leading expert to join them to discuss a key topic. Alongside this there will be a section called: ‘Wow – That’s Interesting!’ which features a newsworthy story or two about the Global Weather Enterprise.

In this episode of The WeatherPod, it’s our pleasure to welcome into the studio Rebecca Leonardi, Managing Partner of WX Risk Global.

Wx Risk Global is a global weather risk solutions company that provides weather and natural peril risk mitigation products and services to individuals, organizations, cities, and nations world-wide, that are the potential victims of increasingly frequent climate-related disasters.

Weather risk solutions provide capital resources after an extreme weather-related event and typical applications include agriculture, green energy, budget defence and catastrophe protection.

In addition, the company operates an Impact Investing service which aims to offer investors the opportunity to strike a balance between financial returns and social good. Typical investment areas include water resources management, sustainable energy, pollution prevention & waste management, and health improvement.

For more information, visit: https://www.wxriskglobal.com/

The impact of COVID-19 on our lives and livelihoods shows clearly that protecting our health is a huge concern for all societies. This is especially so in the face of climate change which threatens to create environments that may exacerbate existing climate-sensitive diseases and introduce new ones.

But just how prepared are we?

To discuss these concerns, hosts Alan Thorpe and David Rogers have invited Madeleine Thomson into the studio. Madeleine is the Interim Head of Our Planet, Our Health at the Wellcome Trust. She previously held senior research positions at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) and the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. She has also served as director of the IRI/Pan American Heath Organization -WHO Collaborating Centre on Early Warning Systems for Malaria and Other Climate-Sensitive Diseases.

Educated at the University of Sheffield, Imperial College London and the University of Liverpool, she originally trained as a field entomologist and spent much of her early career doing operational research to support large-scale health interventions, mainly in Africa.

Madeleine is the author of “Climate Information for Public Health Action” with Climate scientist Simon Mason.

In this pilot episode, co-presenters Alan Thorpe and David Rogers talk to Dr. David Parsons about the role of the academic sector. David is Professor Emeritus of the Oklahoma University Department of Meteorology and, until 2018, the Director of the School of Meteorology at Oklahoma University.