Early warning system
AR5 Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability, Glossary, published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) defines an early warning system as: ‘The set of capacities needed to generate and disseminate timely and meaningful warning information to enable individuals, communities, and organizations threatened by a hazard to prepare to act promptly and appropriately to reduce the possibility of harm or loss.’
Global Warming of 1.5 ºC, Glossary, published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2018, defines Early warning systems (EWS) as: ‘The set of technical, financial and institutional capacities needed to generate and disseminate timely and meaningful warning information to enable individuals, communities and organizations threatened by a hazard to prepare to act promptly and appropriately to reduce the possibility of harm or loss. Dependent upon context, EWS may draw upon scientific and/or Indigenous knowledge. EWS are also considered for ecological applications e.g., conservation, where the organization itself is not threatened by hazard but the ecosystem under conservation is (an example is coral bleaching alerts), in agriculture (for example, warnings of ground frost, hailstorms) and in fisheries (storm and tsunami warnings).’
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