First Regional Climate Center Launched in Barbados

Barbados has launched the first Regional Climate Centre, RCC, in the Caribbean, according to the Caribbean Community, CARICOM, secretariat. The center is situated in the headquarters of the Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology, CIMH, which is located in the capital city of Bridgetown.

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The launch of the new center comes amid the need for Caribbean island nations to mitigate and respond to droughts and other dangers spawned by global climate change.

A 2016 study released by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization noted that climate change is “expected to increase the intensity and frequency of droughts in the Caribbean, so countries in the region must enhance their capabilities to deal with this and other extreme weather-related challenges to ensure food security and hunger eradication.”

Even in its infancy, the Regional Climate Centre reports that unless precipitation is “closely monitored, one does not often realize that drought is upon you or is approaching until the effects are already felt.”

Tyrone Sutherland, coordinating director of the Caribbean Meteorological Organisation, CMO, noted that the climate center's modeling phase began in 2012.

“Eventually, when the WMO's (World Meteorological Organization) governing body met in China last October, we took a proposal to them and they were impressed with what they saw, and ultimately we were approved as a Regional Climate Centre in May of this year,” he said.

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The concept for installing the center was first submitted to the World Meteorological Organization, WMO, in 2009. A year would pass before the project was approved and its installment was finally sanctioned in May.