STORM SHIFT

Caribbean meteorological experts say the region is working to strengthen alternative partnerships to shore up resilience in what is expected to be a very active hurricane season.

This comes amid funding cuts to the United States-based National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) by the Donald Trump administration which has impacted research, analysis, and forecasting for one of the world’s largest weather monitoring agencies.

Describing the decision by the Trump administration as “unfortunate”, Dr David Farrell, principal of the Caribbean Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology (CIMH), said he has been assured that NOAA will continue to provide services to the region.

However, he said the development has underscored the urgent need for the Caribbean and Latin America, territories particularly vulnerable to hurricanes, to diversify their cooperation with other countries offering similar services.

“We have to look to the future and look to ways to make sure that we build the necessary resilience in the region that allows us to deal with these types of shocks, where governments change policy, so that we don’t build a unique dependence on any one country, but we build a dependence on a world community,” he said.

However, he noted that there are certain pieces of information that cannot be replaced from NOAA such as hurricane hunters, that gather critical information about a storm’s structure, intensity, movement, and rainfall patterns, which is crucial for predicting a hurricane’s path, intensity, and potential impacts.

“We’re not removing other partnerships, we are building on existing partnerships for a more resilient Caribbean,” he added.

STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP

He was speaking at yesterday’s press briefing for the first High Level Policy Dialogue with the Caribbean, under the European Union’s (EU) Latin America and the Caribbean Digital Alliance, a strategic partnership to support inclusive and human-centric digital transformation.

A key bi-regional area of this cooperation is the EU’s support for digital tools to strengthen preparedness and resilience to weather- and climate-related disasters.

Meanwhile, head of the Meteorological Service of Jamaica, Evan Thompson, told The Gleaner that the developments at NOAA are concerning for the island, which depends heavily on its services.

“There are so many programmes that we have in Jamaica that are somewhat dependent on some of the funding or the expertise or the research capabilities that come out of the United States, so it would be really very heartrending to think that all of this would be pulled from under us,” he said.

However, he stated that active discussions are being held across the region to create strategies to mitigate any negative impacts.

Key among these is to continue improving the capacity of the region to respond to weather events, by partnering with other countries such as those in the EU.

“We really need to refocus our attention on building our resilience, which is something that we have been moving towards. We’ve not only accepted aid to just implement, but accepting aid to build our capacity so that we can implement and extend ourselves into being able to produce some of the things that we couldn’t produce in the past,” he said.

Meanwhile, Farrell pointed out that collaborations with Europe are not new and have played a role in increasing the adaptive capacities of various sectors in the region. He pointed to the impact of programmes such as the Caribbean Risk and Early Warning Systems and the work of the Commonwealth Fund as examples.

These initiatives, Farrell contended, have also fostered exchange of knowledge.

“This collaboration with Europe is extremely important because we need to better understand to be able to prepare properly,” he said. “It is really a partnership and not simply an expectation that Europe gives. We have to give back and we have to contribute and we have to build something in the region that is resilient,” he said.

Dr Erja Askola, EU ambassador to Jamaica, said the EU’s cooperation with the Caribbean and Latin America in weather forecasting tools “reflects a shared and urgent concern across the region on climate resilience”.

“As we enter the hurricane season, we stand to reinforce the regional efforts to enhance early warning systems and emergency preparedness,” she said.

She also highlighted the partnership with the CIMH through which support is provided across other climate services value chains.

Additionally, she noted that the EU is leveraging flagship European earth observation programmes such as Copernicus and Destination Earth. A regional Copernicus LAC Centre is currently under development in Panama, which will apply Earth Observation data to address disaster risk reduction in Latin America and the Caribbean.

“We are firmly committed to deepening the collaboration with other Caribbean stakeholders as well, by expanding access to EU data and forecast tools, most of which are open, interoperable, and freely available for regional news,” she said.

sashana.small@gleanerjm.com