Today the National MET service brought together several stakeholders for a multi-hazard early warning systems workshop. The goal is to move away from reporting on hazards as they're occurring to warning residents in specific areas what may be coming their way. This will allow them to better prepare and to mitigate damage to property. The Senior Climatologist told us more.
Shanae Young, Senior Climatologist, National MET Service
"This workshop is co designing early warning products at different time scales, the weather, today, tomorrow, and also climate time scales. We have a wide range of stakeholders and we're basically working with Colombia University through a project we have with the United Nations development program and also the World Food Program and the Koran government and basically Colombia University was hired to help us create hazard maps for different key climate hazards which includes drought, heat waves, severe thunder storms, strong winds, etc. This is important because we all know that whether and climate affects all sectors but it affects each sector including the general public in a different way so we're mapping out how these hazards have impacts on different sectors and we're also establishing critical thresholds so for somebody in Belize City to be affected by an excessive rainfall event and get flooded, there's a certain rainfall amount that would cause that so we need to know what those rainfall amounts are in order for us to proper provide early warning to that particular area or community in Belize so that they're not flooded or they do things to mitigate or prevent severe flooding."
"At the MET office we traditionally provide weather forecast but we're in the process of moving towards impact based forecast so not just telling persons if it's going to rain or be hot but how it will affect them."
"And all of these multi hazard early warning workshops, these different consultancies that we have with Colombia University, World Food Program, and many other agencies are helping us in our process of developing our five year strategic plan. So on the 23rd on officially World Met Day we will be hosting a consultation in Belmopan at the NEMO office, again with all these key stakeholders because the work that we do at the MET service is not just based on what we think people or different users need but we actually letting those users or sectors provide input as to what types of products, what types of services they require, what time scale, how quickly, how accurate do they need that information so that we can plan and incorporate those and improve some of the current services that we provide to them."
And on Monday, The National MET service will be having a weather and climate fair at the Mae Gordon Park in Belmopan to celebrate World MET Day.
