Met officers from across the region are this week participating in the region's first climate forum of Central America. And before you say, ' 'not another workshop on climate change,' we promise you this one isn't. Here is more.
Keith Swift Reporting,
What does this have to do with what these meteorologists are doing?........... plenty, according to Belize's Chief Met Officer Carlos Fuller:
Carlos Fuller,
"We meet every three or four months to develop a climate outlook forum; that is how we believe its going to look for the next three months. This is very important for the agricultural people to decide if the rainy season is going to come early or later and so what sort of seed they use and how early or how late they should put back their planting and other applications, whether it is in health, hydropower generation, these various uses can use these products to make their activity and to minimize any specific losses."
So for the next four days 21 meteorologists from 7 Central American countries, including Belize, are in the King's Room at the Princess Hotel analyzing weather charts, rain volume statistics, and other weather variables on computer models to determine where it will and won't rain, when, and how much to expect.
Carlos Fuller,
"They are based on the computer models from the various international models out there but also on the tendencies that we have seen in our own climate. For example if the past two or three months have anything in particular that we have seen in the past and hence we can use that to predict the future. So we are looking at our local data but also the computer models that we get from abroad."
And along with those historical analyses, they will also be looking at recent events in Belize such as the heavy rains in January. We all remember those images when the city was submerged under flood water and when the Western Highway became a rushing water way. Fuller says that reviewing the evidence from the recent past and putting them into computer models will tell them a lot about the future.
Carlos Fuller,
"This is really gong to give them a heads up. For example the user community might want to know if we think the hurricane season is going to begin with a jump start like we did a year or two ago when we had hurricanes in May or is it to delay until August when we see the first hurricane. This is the sort of outputs we are hoping we can tell the people at the end of our deliberations what we are seeing in the near future."
