By Robert Evans

GENEVA, Nov 28 (Reuters) - Governments in rich and poor countries should focus more on investing in early warning systems that can save lives in natural disasters, a United Nations expert said on Wednesday.

Maryam Golnaraghi of the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) told Reuters that around 75 per cent of nations had no such system in operation.

"We need to keep political interest focused on early warning because governments need to understand that they have to invest in and update their national water and weather services," said Golnaraghi of the WMO's natural disaster prevention bureau.

She pointed to the relatively low casualty figures in the Sidr cyclone this month in Bangladesh -- where a warning system ensuring the public is aware of impending disaster and shelters has been in operation for some years.

Some 3,500 people died during Sidr but the casualties were far fewer than in 1991, before a warning system existed, when about 143,000 people died in another cyclone. In 1970, some 300,000 were killed in a similar disaster.

Golnaraghi was speaking as the WMO wrapped up a three-day conference of experts at its Geneva headquarters on the role national hydrological and meteorological services can play in reducing the risk communities face in natural disasters.

Extreme weather events like storms, floods, cyclones and hurricanes are expected to increase around the globe -- including in areas like Europe that have been relatively free of them -- under the influence of climate change, experts say.

Golnaraghi said this week's gathering was called to exchange ideas on best practices in the use of national weather services with the eventual aim of preparing overall guidelines for countries moving to set up, or improve, warning systems.

In the next year, pilot projects would be in operation in areas ranging from India to the Caribbean in which successful national and cross-border schemes will be tested out.

Apart from Bangladesh itself, highly effective systems exist in Cuba, in France and around Shanghai in China, she said, and aspects of these would be combined in the pilot projects.

The intergovernmental Group on Earth Observations said on Wednesday in South Africa one such satellite-based method, the Global Earth Observation System of Systems, should be on line by around 2018 and could save thousands of lives and billions of dollars by improving preparation ahead of disasters.

By 2009, Golnaraghi said, it was hoped full-fledged, tested guidelines for setting up warning systems could be accepted by experts at a WMO gathering and offered to governments.

Following the December 26, 2004, tsunami that killed some 230,000 people around the Indian Ocean, aid poured in to help in setting up warning systems, and countries in other parts of world became alive to the problem.

"But a lot of the interest that was aroused by the tsunami has dried up," said Golnaraghi. "We are hoping it is not going to take another tsunami to raise it again."

(Editing by Jonathan Lynn and Michael Winfrey)

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