Although the world is not yet meeting greenhouse gas reduction targets under the Paris Agreement, we can still reverse the negative trends and that is why I am slightly optimistic, the Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), Petteri Taalas, told Croatian state agency Hina in an interview.

Petteri Taalas, the WMO Secretary-General and former Director General of the Finnish Meteorological Institute, spoke to Hina before his official visit to Croatia on 15-16 September to mark the 75th anniversary of the state meteorological service DHMZ and the 30th anniversary of its admission to the WMO.

During his stay, Taalas is due to sign a memorandum of understanding and cooperation with the Zagreb-based International Sava River Basin Commission and meet with Science and Education Minister, Radovan Fuchs.

Taalas will visit the mountain peak of Goli Vrh in Istria where the DHMZ has set up its new radar center as part of a modernization project, which includes installing state-of-the-art systems of automatic surface meteorological stations, meteorological-oceanographic buoys and remote measurement systems, including meteorological radars.

“The present meteorological observation network will make it possible for Croatia to fulfill its international obligations when it comes to combating climate warming,” Hina said.

‘Fairly good progress’

Citing the 2014 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Taalas said that if we failed to limit the use of fossil fuels, global warming could increase by 2.5-3 degrees Celsius by the end of this century. “At the moment we are heading towards 1.5 to 2 Celsius degrees warming, which is more than the the Paris Agreement limits,” he said, adding that we can still reach the upper limit of the Paris agreement.

However, at the last UN climate conference, the richest countries, European countries and G7 countries demonstrated their wish to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Although some countries, including China and India, are unable to reach that limit yet, Taalas believes that the limits set by the Paris Agreement can be reached.

“There has been some progress, and we have also seen a growing amount of technological means that are economically attractive,” he said explaining that it is more and more economically attractive to invest in solar and wind energy than in fossil energy. “You can produce energy at a cheaper price by using solar or wind energy,” he noted, adding that hydropower, nuclear energy and bioenergy are needed and complement solar and wind energy.

We have better technological means to be successful in mitigating climate change, Taalas said. We expect important changes in the transport and energy systems, and particularly in warming and cooling systems in some countries, he said, adding that “we have seen fairly good progress”.

“We could still stop these negative trends in weather patterns, such as heatwaves, drought, flooding and tropical storms by limiting our emissions of carbon dioxide consumption of fossil fuels… We are not expecting to see the death of the mankind or the death of biosphere because of climate change,” and that is why I am slightly optimistic, Taalas said.