Speaker 1: Welcome to zero. I'm Akshatrati this week weather data, volcanic
Speaker 1: skies and conflict in Timbuctu. Here in the UK, chatting
Speaker 1: about the weather is basically national pastime. When is it
Speaker 1: going to rain? When will we see the sun again?
Speaker 1: And why have we gone through all four seasons? Before lunch?
Speaker 1: And thanks to weather forecasting we can have those conversations
Speaker 1: not just with good humor but also a good level
Speaker 1: of confidence. We get these forecasts because the UK has
Speaker 1: a network of more than four hundred weather stations spanning
Speaker 1: the length of the country, from the Orkney Islands in
Speaker 1: the far north to the Scilly Isles in the south.
Speaker 1: The data the weather stations like these collect are invaluable.
Speaker 1: It influences the decisions of governments and companies around the
Speaker 1: world and can be used to make models that predict
Speaker 1: energy consumption, harvests, and even when countries might go to war.
Speaker 1: As my colleague at Bloombergrain, Laura Milan puts it, what
Speaker 1: they do is really important because these data fits then
Speaker 1: into all these climate models, into the research that climate
Speaker 1: sciences do to try to figure out how the world
Speaker 1: works today, and these is the data key to figure
Speaker 1: out how it will change in the future. When it
Speaker 1: comes to making climate models, the more data you have
Speaker 1: and the longer you've been collecting it for the better
Speaker 1: those models become. But weather stations are also expensive to
Speaker 1: set up and maintain, and many countries can't afford them
Speaker 1: in great numbers. Without these stations, it becomes difficult to
Speaker 1: provide accurate weather forecasts and makes it even harder to
Speaker 1: work out how a country will be affected by climate change.
Speaker 1: And while the UK benefits from an abundance of weather stations,
Speaker 1: many countries in Africa are severely lack the resources to
Speaker 1: produce reliable weather and climate data. This week, Laura tells
Speaker 1: the story of weather Station six one two to three
Speaker 1: in Timbec two and what its sudden closure means for
Speaker 1: the people of Mali and climate science across the African continent.
Speaker 1: The story starts with the Arab Spring, which sparked revolutions
Speaker 1: across North Africa, and ends with how the lack of
Speaker 1: African weather data will affect the discussions at COP twenty seven. Laura,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show. Thank you, thank you for having
Speaker 1: me tell me about weather Station six one two to three.
Speaker 1: Weather Station six one two to three was one of
Speaker 1: five weather stations in Mali that had been active for
Speaker 1: more than one hundred years. And these stations that have
Speaker 1: been operating for more than a hundred years, they're really
Speaker 1: valuable because the data that they provide is very consistence
Speaker 1: for a time. This station, in particular world was close
Speaker 1: to the airport in Timbukto. It was set up by
Speaker 1: the French colonialists and it was in a very discret building,
Speaker 1: concrete building near the airport, so you know, no signs,
Speaker 1: know anything. One could have confused it with a warehouse
Speaker 1: or something like that. When I think of Timbuctoo, the
Speaker 1: thing that comes to mind is how Bollywood treats at Hullo.
Speaker 1: So from India. Many Bollywood songs have the word, and
Speaker 1: then it's treated as this like far far away place,
Speaker 1: which many people don't think it's real, right, And I
Speaker 1: think it's the way it resonates in people's imagination. You
Speaker 1: talk about Timbukto in Europe and it's also this far
Speaker 1: away place, this city in the middle of the desert
Speaker 1: that no one has been to, that it's a bit
Speaker 1: mythological even, but it's an actual place. It's an actual city.
Speaker 1: It's home to around thirty thousand people. It's next to
Speaker 1: the Nija River in northern Malis. And the reason why
Speaker 1: there are so many stories around it is because it
Speaker 1: used to be the capital of an ancient empire, and
Speaker 1: it used to be a center for knowledge and culture,
Speaker 1: especially religious studies in the Middle Ages. And so this
Speaker 1: Vali station six one two to three, why did it
Speaker 1: go silent and after one hundred and some years, Well,
Speaker 1: the reason is that the staff had to abandon it.
Speaker 1: The people that were maintaining it, that were taking the data,
Speaker 1: maintaining the equipment, making sure everything was running smoothly, that
Speaker 1: they had been doing that for many years, they had
Speaker 1: to run. They had to fleet Timbuktu. And the reason
Speaker 1: why this happened starts in twenty eleven with the Arab spring.
Speaker 1: One is easy set himself on fire ten years ago,
Speaker 1: which he couldn't have known that a suicide into Nija
Speaker 1: would ignize the entire region. When the regime of Mamagadafi
Speaker 1: collapse in Libya, many of the desert tribes that Khadafi
Speaker 1: had been sponsoring and supporting through the decades had to
Speaker 1: flee and became rebel fighters. Over the last few years,
Speaker 1: Mali has had a problem with militancy. In October twenty eleven,
Speaker 1: ethnic Tuaregs, mostly from the north of the country, launched
Speaker 1: a rebellion. So one of these groups is the National
Speaker 1: Movement for the Liberation of the Azawat and their Tareg fighters,
Speaker 1: and what this group did was surround the city of
Speaker 1: Timbucto and on the first of April twenty twelve, they
Speaker 1: entered the city and took over it, took over the
Speaker 1: main institutions. Then a few days later, the Jihadis of
Speaker 1: a radical Islamic group called ant Sharin followed in and
Speaker 1: they were waiving the black flags that were later characteristic
Speaker 1: of the Islamic state in Syria and in other places.
Speaker 1: So that meant that radical Islamis had taken over the
Speaker 1: city of timbuktwo. And that made the employees of the state,
Speaker 1: from you know, top top government officials to the people
Speaker 1: that were just maintaining the weather station six one, two
Speaker 1: to three, they made them enemies of the invaders and
Speaker 1: so they had to flee. And so what you're describing
Speaker 1: is the start of the Mali War, which is still ongoing.
Speaker 1: And there have been multiple good thoughts that have happened since.
Speaker 1: But when this happened in twenty twelve. What was going
Speaker 1: on in the minds of the people who were working
Speaker 1: on this weather station. Well, I didn't talk directly with
Speaker 1: the people that were working on the station, but I
Speaker 1: did talk to the person in the meteorological agency in
Speaker 1: Mali who was responsible for these people commodity, And obviously
Speaker 1: there was great concern. You have to imagine seeing all
Speaker 1: these news from Bamaco, from the capital news coming in.
Speaker 1: It wasn't an immediate conquest. So the forces from the
Speaker 1: tourreg surrounded the city for a few days. The elders
Speaker 1: from Timbook too went out and started to negotiate with
Speaker 1: them to make sure that they wouldn't destroy some of
Speaker 1: the city's valuable ancient monuments and so on. So these
Speaker 1: went on for a few days, and obviously rumors came
Speaker 1: into the capital, and so this person from Mali's meteorological agency,
Speaker 1: his first concern was to get the people out of there.
Speaker 1: He not law. Obviously, it was very important that Mali
Speaker 1: had a centennial weather station there, but it wasn't more
Speaker 1: important than the lives of that people. So he made
Speaker 1: sure he got them out of Timbook too safely and
Speaker 1: luckily he did that. Now, let's talk about this weather station.
Speaker 1: Why is it that it's so important to have had
Speaker 1: that weather station there? So for any weather station, the
Speaker 1: most important thing is not just the data that it
Speaker 1: gathers is accurate, but that that data at any moment
Speaker 1: in time can be compared with data that has been
Speaker 1: recorded previously. Right, the weather stations that have been running
Speaker 1: for more than a hundred years, that's why they're really relevant.
Speaker 1: They're considered like the most the most valuable ones because
Speaker 1: they allow scientists to compare what's happening today with what
Speaker 1: used to happen like kids and more than a century ago.
Speaker 1: So the loss of weather station six one, two two
Speaker 1: three was tragic not just because of that, but because
Speaker 1: they're really There are very few of those in Mali
Speaker 1: and in Africa. So if a centennial station was lost,
Speaker 1: let's say in China, where there are actually many, or
Speaker 1: in Europe or in Russia, then it's always a tragedy
Speaker 1: because a source of information gets lost. But in Africa,
Speaker 1: where there are very very few of them, then that's
Speaker 1: an actual problem because that means that the set of
Speaker 1: data that this station has been gathering through time gets discontinued.
Speaker 1: So scientists don't have a way anymore of knowing what's
Speaker 1: happening in that place, and even immediately because this weather
Speaker 1: station is collecting local data and also helping local people,
Speaker 1: even immediately after going offline, there were impacts, right, Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: it's not just a long term thing for climate scientists
Speaker 1: to understand a phenomenon that might run for decades or
Speaker 1: for many years, but it's actually weather stations have a
Speaker 1: very immediate application. And in the case of station six
Speaker 1: one to two three, it was very important because it
Speaker 1: helped understand when a very strong gust of wind would
Speaker 1: come through the desert into a lake Deboat, which is
Speaker 1: Mali's largest lake. And so when the people around the
Speaker 1: lake would receive an alert from the weather station that
Speaker 1: this kind of extreme weather it was coming, they were
Speaker 1: able to alert local fishermen and then people traveling in pinas,
Speaker 1: which are kind of long boats that people traveling that
Speaker 1: people used to transport goods and transport themselves. Even so,
Speaker 1: in twenty eleven about ten people died in wind related
Speaker 1: incidents around the lake Devout, but that number increased to
Speaker 1: seventy and the year after Station six one two three
Speaker 1: went offline, so went from ten to seventy just because
Speaker 1: that station wasn't able to alert the people around the
Speaker 1: lake zooming back. There's the local phenomena which we talked about,
Speaker 1: but losing data from weather stations anywhere in the world,
Speaker 1: but more so in places like Mali where there are
Speaker 1: so few, also has international impacts. Right, yeah, absolutely, So
Speaker 1: all these data, all these tiny data points that weather
Speaker 1: stations gather every day. I think about them like little ants, right,
Speaker 1: Like they do their work every day. They do always
Speaker 1: the same. It's not very shiny, but what they do
Speaker 1: is really important because these data fits then into all
Speaker 1: these climate models, into the research that climate sciences do
Speaker 1: to try to figure out how the world works today,
Speaker 1: how the climate of the world works today, how it's changing,
Speaker 1: and these is the data key to figure out how
Speaker 1: it will change in the future. Right, And so this
Speaker 1: whether data sort of becomes the ant hill, and the
Speaker 1: ant hill certainly the thing of marvel. We know. There
Speaker 1: was a very recent study earlier this year where they
Speaker 1: found that only five percent of the deaths caused by
Speaker 1: heat happened in tropical countries where eighty five percent of
Speaker 1: people live. And that just is astonishing because that shouldn't
Speaker 1: be statistically right, and when we asked a scientist about it,
Speaker 1: she said, that's ridiculous, and the reason is because we
Speaker 1: don't have data. That's right. And there is another study
Speaker 1: actually that looked at heatwaves around the world and it
Speaker 1: found that around the Sahara region there were no heatwaves,
Speaker 1: no heatwaves had happened according to researchers. But that wasn't
Speaker 1: the case. Obviously, in the world's biggest desert, there are heatwaves.
Speaker 1: The problem is that there are no weather stations to
Speaker 1: record them. Now, for the story, you produced a map
Speaker 1: which I remember because it was a stunning map, and
Speaker 1: it noted the density of weather data stations around the world.
Speaker 1: And as with many other things, the continent of Africa,
Speaker 1: not just a few countries, but the continent of Africa
Speaker 1: was dark. Yes, And that like a very obvious way
Speaker 1: of showing that there are very, very very few weather
Speaker 1: stations in Africa. In particular Mali has I said before
Speaker 1: it used to have five centennial stations, for after the
Speaker 1: one that we've mentioned in Timbuktu went. But in total
Speaker 1: it has thirteen active weather stations, compared to Germany, for example,
Speaker 1: in Europe, a country that's one third the size of Mali.
Speaker 1: Germany has almost two hundred main weather stations, so that's
Speaker 1: more than ten times what Mali has. And then it's
Speaker 1: not just a matter of quantity but also of quality.
Speaker 1: So the World Meteorological Organization says that weather infrastructure in
Speaker 1: Africa is literiorating very fast, only twenty two percent of
Speaker 1: the station's met global reporting standards in twenty nineteen. And
Speaker 1: again this represents a very big problem for the scientists
Speaker 1: trying to study the phenomenon, weather phenomenon and climate phenomenon
Speaker 1: going on in Africa and in the rest of the world.
Speaker 1: So this lack of data, how is that feeding into
Speaker 1: or not feeding into climate science that looks at global
Speaker 1: phenomena and looks at many different time periods. So the
Speaker 1: data is necessary to produce climate science, and all the
Speaker 1: scientific papers are gathered once every five years by the
Speaker 1: IPCC into climate reports. The problem is that if there
Speaker 1: is no data from Africa, the representation Africa has on reports,
Speaker 1: very important reports like the IPCC is very very small. Now,
Speaker 1: what's being done about the situation? The good thing about
Speaker 1: all of this is that there's a lot of very
Speaker 1: smart people trying to fix this issue. One of the
Speaker 1: difficulties of this problem is that national meteorological organizations in
Speaker 1: Africa are often underfunded, and setting up a station that
Speaker 1: is valid for the WMO that can take reliable whether
Speaker 1: data is not cheap. It can cost more or less
Speaker 1: around twenty thousand dollars for every station just to set
Speaker 1: it up, and then it comes maintenance and the staff
Speaker 1: needed to maintain in it. Weather stations are not always
Speaker 1: a priority. If you have a government that's struggling with
Speaker 1: conflict in the case of Mali, or with natural disasters
Speaker 1: in the case of many other African nations, then weather
Speaker 1: stations figuring out how hot or how cold or how
Speaker 1: humid is in certain places doesn't necessarily come on top
Speaker 1: of mind for the people governing, right if you would
Speaker 1: use that money twenty thousand dollars, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: money I do think that are really important on the
Speaker 1: ground as needed, that's it, and and that are more
Speaker 1: urgent or that feel more important, like for example, you'd
Speaker 1: set up schools, or you're set up food relief programs
Speaker 1: or any any sort of program that solves an immediate need,
Speaker 1: whereas often the weather and climate are seen as something
Speaker 1: that's almost a luxury. But there is technological programs that's
Speaker 1: happening that's helping. Yes, that's right. So what's been happening
Speaker 1: in the past few years is that technology has made
Speaker 1: some of these instruments used to measure climate and weather data.
Speaker 1: It's made them cheaper, and it's also made it possible
Speaker 1: for these instruments to actually send the data remotely, so
Speaker 1: you wouldn't need a person doing the maintenance or being
Speaker 1: there every day all day recording the sets of data.
Speaker 1: One of the people I found in my reporting is
Speaker 1: Nick Vanda Gisen. He's a professor in the Netherlands and
Speaker 1: he has set up something called the Trans African Hydrometeorological Observatory,
Speaker 1: and this is a network of weather stations across Africa.
Speaker 1: They can work remotely, they use modern equipment, and they
Speaker 1: are much much cheaper than the traditional ones. And how
Speaker 1: much cheaper are we talking here? So we've said that
Speaker 1: a traditional weather station costs twenty thousand dollars. Their goal,
Speaker 1: Tahama's goal is for one station to cost around two
Speaker 1: hundred dollars. That's a lot, that's a lot cheaper, and
Speaker 1: they're not there yet. So they've been able to produce
Speaker 1: weather stations at the price of around two thousand dollars
Speaker 1: and they have installed around six hundred of these across
Speaker 1: Africa since you reported the story last year. Have there
Speaker 1: been any updates? Yesn't know. The main headline is that
Speaker 1: station six one, two two three is still offline. When
Speaker 1: I talk to the people at Malimtoto, you fully maintaine
Speaker 1: or minimum. What they told me was that bringing it
Speaker 1: back online would require a significant investment because this sort
Speaker 1: of equipment is very delicate, and so when it goes
Speaker 1: offline for a while and no one maintains it, then
Speaker 1: it requires either huge maintenance or just completely new equipment.
Speaker 1: That hasn't happened. The security situation in Mali hasn't improved either,
Speaker 1: so people might have read in the news how French
Speaker 1: troops and troops from the European Union have left Mali
Speaker 1: as well. And actually one thing that happened is that
Speaker 1: I wanted to go physically to Mali to report on
Speaker 1: this story, and a few weeks, I think even just
Speaker 1: a few days before, I was thinking about that tree
Speaker 1: and trying to figure out how the logistics would work.
Speaker 1: A French journalist was kidnapped by rebel groups, and then
Speaker 1: that meant that the safety of journalists in that part
Speaker 1: of Molly could not be guaranteed, so we could never
Speaker 1: travel there after the break our. Timbuctoo's historical records the
Speaker 1: answer to Mali's lack of weather data and what does
Speaker 1: the lack of accurate climate models across the continent of
Speaker 1: Africa mean for discussions of loss and damage. Of course,
Speaker 1: weather stations aren't the only way in which we can
Speaker 1: gather data. Of course, current data is gathered from weather stations,
Speaker 1: but there are other approaches to try and understand what's
Speaker 1: happening to the continent right absolutely, and one way to
Speaker 1: do that, and it's not just in Africa, it's being
Speaker 1: done everywhere are historical documents. So if you go back
Speaker 1: in time, people have been recording what the weather has
Speaker 1: been like for hundreds and even thousands of years, and
Speaker 1: there are clues in historic documents. In the case of
Speaker 1: Mali and of Timbuktuo specifically, Timbuktu was a cultural center
Speaker 1: and one of the main cities in North Africa, so
Speaker 1: people would go there to study many many things and
Speaker 1: they would leave written record of what was going on.
Speaker 1: There are some stunning architectural buildings that still stand in Timbuctwo. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: and they're actually protected by UNESCO. So they are ancient
Speaker 1: shrines and churches that could be visited, and they're of
Speaker 1: a characteristic architecture made with mud, very very typical of Timbuktu.
Speaker 1: And so what used to happen in around the sixteenth
Speaker 1: centuries that people like I said they would travel for
Speaker 1: weeks and for months through the desert to learn from
Speaker 1: the wise men in the city. They would learn everything
Speaker 1: from Islamic theology, history, philosophy, anything. And then the city
Speaker 1: was also across roads for tribes that lived in the desert,
Speaker 1: so you can think that they used to be lots
Speaker 1: of camel caravans and that would carry salt and gold,
Speaker 1: even slaves across the desert and they would be traded
Speaker 1: in Timbuktu. That left a very big pay portrayal in
Speaker 1: the form of manuscripts that describe what life was like
Speaker 1: at the time and that tried to register things from
Speaker 1: agriculture techniques and obviously the weather. So we have these
Speaker 1: historical documents from centuries ago that have detailed weather conditions
Speaker 1: in them. Have we ended up using them in some form?
Speaker 1: Not yet, And that's another fascinating part of the stories,
Speaker 1: and something I find fascinating about Timbook two, and it's
Speaker 1: that what we call the Timbook two manuscripts that people
Speaker 1: might have heard or read about them, is a huge
Speaker 1: collection of documents, not just from Timbook two, but from
Speaker 1: the whole region that have been preserved within families for centuries.
Speaker 1: So families will be guardians or custodians of a certain
Speaker 1: set of documents that gets passed through generations, and academics
Speaker 1: have only started to describe the surface of the wisdom
Speaker 1: and the contents of these manuscripts. So I talk to
Speaker 1: some researchers in the US that are digitalizing these documents,
Speaker 1: so basically scanning them and making sure they don't get lost,
Speaker 1: they don't get burned or stolen or anything like that,
Speaker 1: and then analyzing the contents. They have made it possible
Speaker 1: for people to search online certain keywords on these documents.
Speaker 1: So if you do that search for rain, for example,
Speaker 1: you'll be able to find that there are a bunch
Speaker 1: of documents that rain and rain changes and so on.
Speaker 1: But no one as far as I know, has gone
Speaker 1: as far as to put that into scientific research. But
Speaker 1: that has been done with ancient documents. In European nations
Speaker 1: like Germany and the UK, people have gone to monasteries
Speaker 1: and looked at the annotations of what the weather was
Speaker 1: like centuries ago and produce scientific research out of this.
Speaker 1: So it's certainly possible to find better models eventually once
Speaker 1: the stata has been translated into a usable form. Yes, absolutely,
Speaker 1: it won't be as thorough as if you had had
Speaker 1: someone recording the temperatures every day for the past five
Speaker 1: hundred years, or water levels for the past five hundred years,
Speaker 1: which you know there are places in the world that
Speaker 1: have been recording for many centuries. But at least you
Speaker 1: can have an idea on whether rivers were bigger or smaller,
Speaker 1: whether rain was more frequent, the winds, etc. And then
Speaker 1: that could help scientific research definitely. So there's the story
Speaker 1: I find fascinating, which is in eighteen fifteen, Mount Tambora,
Speaker 1: which is a huge volcano, went off and put all
Speaker 1: these sulfur related compounds into the atmosphere. Caused what is
Speaker 1: now known as the year that had no summer across
Speaker 1: the world. There were famines, deaths, etc. But it also
Speaker 1: changed art because researchers have now analyzed paintings from that
Speaker 1: era compared them to the pre eighteen fifteen era, and
Speaker 1: essentially the skies turned more orange because there was more
Speaker 1: sulfur and that's what the painters were reflecting in their paintings.
Speaker 1: So there's all these downstream impacts that happened from whether
Speaker 1: and are they're recorded in these weird forms which may
Speaker 1: not be data, but it's still data if you want
Speaker 1: to interpret it that way. Yeah, and maybe we're going
Speaker 1: a bit tough topic either know. But there's also research
Speaker 1: on the legends that Aboriginal Australians tell each other and
Speaker 1: have been telling each other for millennia, because you might know,
Speaker 1: the Aboriginal Australians are the longest running people or civilization
Speaker 1: on Earth, and researchers have analyzed what they thought were
Speaker 1: legends and found that they actually tell the story of
Speaker 1: the land. And so that these stories correspond with changes
Speaker 1: on rivers and mountains and on the sea that actually
Speaker 1: happened eighties and eighties ago. It's not just weather station's
Speaker 1: recording the changes and the data there's these changes can
Speaker 1: be found everywhere. Now we are about to head into
Speaker 1: another cop meeting, which is this annual climate conference that
Speaker 1: the UN organizers. This time it's in Egypt November, called
Speaker 1: COP twenty seven because it's a twenty seventh time it's
Speaker 1: happening and it's the fifth time it's being hosted by
Speaker 1: a country in Africa. How does the lack of good
Speaker 1: weather data fit into this international climate discussions and negotiations.
Speaker 1: It's at the heart of it, because if you don't
Speaker 1: have the data, then there is no discussion possible. We
Speaker 1: tend to say that Africa is the continent suffering the
Speaker 1: most from climate change, but the one that has contributed
Speaker 1: less to it. So the second part we know for
Speaker 1: a fact that it's the one that has contributed less
Speaker 1: to it. The first part of the sentence, it's suffering
Speaker 1: the most, is the hard one to prove because we
Speaker 1: have this intuition, but actually there isn't that much hard
Speaker 1: data on it. And the reason is again weather stations.
Speaker 1: So if you don't know whether a heat wave is happening,
Speaker 1: or why people are dying in a certain place, or
Speaker 1: why crops are failing, then it's really hard to attribute
Speaker 1: these effects to climate change. And so a lot of
Speaker 1: what will be discussed in COP this year will hopefully
Speaker 1: be around that, around the need to have better data
Speaker 1: coming from Africa in order to know more the effects
Speaker 1: of climate change and what's happening there. And then the
Speaker 1: other effect that the lack of data is having is
Speaker 1: that in the IPCC reports there is lots of research
Speaker 1: reflected on America and Europe and developed nations, but then
Speaker 1: developing nations have less of an importance because of that
Speaker 1: lack of data. Something that's happened over the last few
Speaker 1: years that's really changed the way we talk about climate
Speaker 1: change is this phenomena of attribution studies where climate scientists
Speaker 1: can look at an extreme weather event, maybe that's a
Speaker 1: heat wave, maybe it's a flood, and tell you just
Speaker 1: how much worse they were made by climate change. Yes,
Speaker 1: and again Africa, it's so important to have these sort
Speaker 1: of studies about things that happen in Africa, about extreme
Speaker 1: weather events in Africa, and we're not seeing them. And
Speaker 1: again we're not seeing them because we don't have the
Speaker 1: data to produce these studies. And the implications of that
Speaker 1: are huge. It's not just a matter of scientific knowledge,
Speaker 1: but African nations and this is going to be a
Speaker 1: really important issue at COP twenty seven, that meeting you
Speaker 1: mentioned before in Egypt, in November African nations. One of
Speaker 1: the things that they want is something that again sorry
Speaker 1: to bring up the jargon, but it's something called loss
Speaker 1: and damage, which is the developing nations suffering from the
Speaker 1: effects of climate change should be compensated by developed nations
Speaker 1: that caused climate change in the first place, or that
Speaker 1: are the main contributors to climate change. But if you
Speaker 1: can approve that something has been caused by climate change,
Speaker 1: and then how can you get compensated? Right? So this
Speaker 1: is why again data is so important, so you can
Speaker 1: produce studies, including attribution studies, that would then later allow
Speaker 1: a country to go to developed nation and say these
Speaker 1: extreme events, say a heat wave or a typhoon, or
Speaker 1: a storm, or a flawed or anything, caused this amount
Speaker 1: of damage to my GDP, to my crop production, an
Speaker 1: ex amount of deaths of that number of people lost
Speaker 1: their homes, all these very tangible, very real effects. And
Speaker 1: I have this scientific paper which has been peer reviewed
Speaker 1: and authored by reputable scientists saying this event was made
Speaker 1: much worse by climate change. So how are you planning
Speaker 1: to compensate me? So if a country cannot do that,
Speaker 1: then the injustice in the system remains what's a climate
Speaker 1: story that you found meaningful? I think the story that
Speaker 1: changes the way I see climate and the way see
Speaker 1: climate journalism. Was the first story that I read about
Speaker 1: how climate had impacted and contributed to the Arab Spring.
Speaker 1: So that's when I started to think that climate and
Speaker 1: climate change had a huge impact into everything that happens
Speaker 1: in our lives, in a small way but also in
Speaker 1: a big way. And there's a more personal connection there.
Speaker 1: Because the Arab Spring is what drew you into journalism,
Speaker 1: that's it. Well, I was a journalist before, but I
Speaker 1: happened to be in Cairo when the Arab Spring broke.
Speaker 1: I wrote about it for two years, and I am
Speaker 1: slightly ashamed to say that I never made the climate connection.
Speaker 1: It was later when the reports started to come out
Speaker 1: about how if I remember, well, two thousand and eight
Speaker 1: had been a really dry year, and that drought had
Speaker 1: continued and had impacted with prices and how bread had
Speaker 1: become more expensive. That's when I made the connection. But yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: there's there's a very personal side to it that this
Speaker 1: event that I lived in such an intense way was
Speaker 1: so affected by climate change, and I just lived through
Speaker 1: it without realizing it. A lack of good climate dation
Speaker 1: might sound like a wonky subject, but as Laura's reporting shows,
Speaker 1: it has huge consequences for those without it. Access to
Speaker 1: good weather data should be as much a part of
Speaker 1: climate justice discussions as say, ensuring coal miners are not
Speaker 1: left behind or developing countries have enough funding to move
Speaker 1: to clean energy. For more. You can read Laura's story
Speaker 1: on bloomberg dot com slash green. It's also linked in
Speaker 1: the show notes. Thanks so much for listening to Zero.
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Speaker 1: Zero Pod at Bloomberg dot net. Zero's producer is Oscar
Speaker 1: Boyd and senior producer is Christine driscoll Our. Theme music
Speaker 1: is composed by Wonderlely. Many people help make the show
Speaker 1: a success this week, thanks to my colleague at Bloombergreen,
Speaker 1: Eric Austin, who has everything in his brain that I
Speaker 1: wish I had. I'm Aukshatrati back next week