From Science to Decisions: Weather and Climate Intelligence as Strategic Infrastructure
Global Development Lab Annual Lecture with Guest Speaker Professor Celeste Saulo
Date: Tuesday 3 March
Time: 15.00 – 16.15
Location: Queens Tower Rooms, Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, SW7 2AZ
Extreme weather and climate-related hazards are reshaping development pathways, disrupting economies, and testing the capacity of institutions to prot)ect lives and livelihoods. At the same time, scientific understanding and predictive capabilities have advanced rapidly, offering unprecedented opportunities to anticipate risk.
In this lecture, WMO Secretary-General Prof. Celeste Saulo will examine how advances in Earth observation, data integration, and forecasting have transformed hazard anticipation, and why uneven capacity to use this information strategically leads to unequal outcomes. Through selected examples, she will show how heat, floods, storms, and droughts trigger cascading impacts: from food and water stress and health risks to disrupted supply chains, productivity losses, and setbacks to development.
This gap between scientific capability and its effective use underpins the resilience divide. Some societies act on risk before it materializes; others absorb losses not for lack of science, but for lack of capacity to use it. Drawing on the work of the World Meteorological Organization and initiatives such as Early Warnings for All, the lecture will highlight the practical bridges needed to convert science into scalable public value: strong national meteorological and hydrological services, end-to-end early warning systems, last-mile communication, and partnerships that align innovation, policy, and delivery.
The lecture will argue that equitable access to actionable weather and climate intelligence is not a technical luxury but strategic infrastructure: essential for risk management, sustainable development, and resilience in an increasingly volatile world.
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Agenda:
- 14.50- Arrival and registration
- 15.05- Opening remarks
- 15.10-15.50- Guest Lecture delivered by Prof. Saulo
- 15.50-16.10- Audience Q&A
For further information and to register, please visit the event page.
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Prof. Saulo was appointed Secretary-General of the WMO in 2023. She is the first female as well as the first South American Secretary-General. Prior to this, she served as the Director of the National Meteorological Service of Argentina since 2014 and was the First Vice-President of the WMO.
Professor Celeste Saulo has been the Director of the Argentinean National Meteorological Service (SMN) and Permanent Representative of Argentina at WMO since July 2014. She was elected to the WMO Executive Council in June 2015. She has been a member of the WMO World Weather Research Programme (WWRP) Scientific Steering Committee since 2011 and has served on various WMO panels related to her field of knowledge. She is full Professor at the University of Buenos Aires and research scientist at the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research.