Caribbean delegates discussing new climate change tools

(BRIDGETOWN, Barbados, CMC) – A three-day workshop aimed at exposing senior Caribbean technocrats to a suite of tools developed under the Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN) project began here on Tuesday.

The Belize-based Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC) said the workshop is being supported by the Caribbean Weather Impact Group (CARIWIG) project involved in risk-based decision-making in the region.

The delegates are being exposed to the Caribbean Assessment Regional DROught (CARiDRO) initiative that was designed to facilitate drought assessment in the context of the Caribbean and Central America. “It is a flexible system that should accommodate the requirements of different users. The online tool is composed of two main sections: a descriptive one where the user can find information on how to use the tool as well as terms and concepts that are useful,” the CCCCC said.

It added that CARiDRO allows the user to access and to process different observed and model datasets for the Caribbean region to produce results based on two drought indexes.

The three-day workshop will also discuss the operations of the “Weather Generator (WG)” that provides daily weather time series for use in impact assessments and impact models.

It generates weather data for the future that can be used across sectors including water, agriculture and health in the same way as historic weather series.

“The main benefit and utility of the WG is that it provides information for a single point location – directly comparable to what is observed at weather stations.”

The CCCCC said that the Tropical storm model is “premised on past memorable and notable storms generating grids for each 15 minute period in the storm model” and that the portal and observed data tool provides information and datasets concerning the observed climate of the present day ; regional climate model projection of the future climate; future scenarios of weather downscaled from the regional climate model projections and scenarios of weather derived from hypothetical tropical cyclone events

“This web portal is intended for use by regional and national institutions, consultants and scientists concerned with the climate and impacts of future climate change in the Caribbean region,” the CCCCC noted.

The CARIWIG project is being implemented collaboratively by the University of Newcastle, Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre (CCCCC), University of East Anglia, University of the West Indies and the Institute of Meteorology in Cuba (INSMET).