Dr Michel Jarraud, Secretary-General Emeritus of the World Meteorological Organization, Delivers Public Lecture on “Climate Change: From Doubt to Evidence – Global and Regional Aspects”

On Monday, October 7th 2019, The Cyprus Institute organized the public lecture entitled “Climate Change: From Doubt to Evidence – Global and Regional Aspects”. The speaker was the distinguished scientist, Dr Michel Jarraud, Secretary-General Emeritus of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). Mr Kyriakos Kokkinos, Chief Scientist for Research and Innovation of the Republic of Cyprus, and member of CyI’s Board of Trustees, addressed the event.

The public talk was held on CyI’s premises and was organized within the context of the launch of the Eastern Mediterranean Middle-East – Climate and Atmospheric Research Center (EMME-CARE). Distinguished members of the academic, political and diplomatic community attended the public lecture.

In his talk, Dr Jarraud, focused on how climate science can inform policy and decision making at all scales, from global to regional to local, in the context of a changing climate. The public lecture provided a historical perspective and described how the IPCC process developed, in order to make available the most authoritative information, with respect to climate change, the anthropogenic contribution to it and the necessity and urgency to deal with both mitigation and adaptation aspects.

Dr Jarraud noted that different countries need to cooperate across disciplines and across borders. The rapid worsening of the global climate force us to take into account different time scales of how our world will evolve. “The past is increasingly misleading as predictor, so high-level decisions have to be taken based on scenarios and probabilities”, he said.

In addition, the public lecture addressed the linkages with sustainable development issues, the need to adjust governance mechanisms, and also presented future perspectives. According to Dr Michel Jarraud, countries need to have global strategies for key sectors as energy, transport, industry and forestry. “No country can do it alone. A multilateral approach is absolutely essential”, he noted.

Dr Michel Jarraud is the Secretary-General Emeritus of WMO from 2016. He served as the Deputy Secretary-General of WMO (1995-2003), the Secretary-General of WMO and as a Member of the Chief Executive Board (CEB) of the UN System (2004-2015).

He also served as the Chairman of UN-Water, the coordination body for all water related issues in the UN System Secretary-General Emeritus WMO (2012-2015). In 2016, he was awarded among other distinctions, with the highest distinction - Silver medal of the European Meteorological Society (EMS), for his contribution to the development of European meteorology.