Activities Being Undertaken to Monitor the Impact of Tropical Cyclones on Regional Countries

Several activities will be undertaken in the North and Central American and Caribbean region this year to monitor the effects of hurricane and tropical cyclone events and strengthen response.

This was disclosed by Deputy Director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Hurricane Centre, Jamie Rhome, during the recently concluded World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Regional Conference (Regional Association IV), at The Jamaica Pegasus hotel in New Kingston.

He was providing a report on past and upcoming activities of the Hurricane Committee during the conference.

“We are expanding the storm surge sensors to countries. We are doing training focused on teaching them to build the sensors. We are trying to teach technicians in the Dominican Republic to build and maintain the sensors on their own, that’s actively ongoing this year,” Mr. Rhome said.

He further informed that the training would commence shortly for implementation of a programme in The Bahamas.

“We are going to launch the storm surge capabilities for The Bahamas in a few months and have a kickoff workshop to commence the training and implementation,” he stated.

Mr. Rhome also disclosed that the hurricane awareness tour, which was negatively impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, will return in April this year.

“Thank you to all the host nations… you are helping us with the logistics of bringing this back. This was a really popular outreach activity within the region,” he said, while indicating that in-person training workshops will also return this year.

Meanwhile, Mr. Rhome advised that storm surge modelling and risk mapping activities were carried out in several countries, noting that that work will continue in the current calendar year.

“Many of you have seen the storm surges modelling and risk mapping that we have done; that continues to go really, really well. So far, we have launched storm surge modelling and risk mapping for Haiti, the Dominican Republic, the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico, Belize and Guatemala, and we are on target to deliver similar capabilities for The Bahamas later this year,” he stated.

Mr. Rhome indicated that video chat was used to coordinate tropical cyclone watches and warnings.

“We have successfully demonstrated the ability to build and deploy affordable real-time storm surge sensors within the Dominican Republic. Given the successes that we have had there, we are starting to try and scale that out a bit more, so that we can potentially deploy those sensors in other countries within the region,” he said.

Mr. Rhome noted, as well, that online training modules, which were in English, were converted to Spanish and French as part of efforts to increase accessibility.

The WMO Regional Conference (Regional Association IV) brought together representatives of meteorological and hydrological services from North and Central America and the Caribbean, with representatives from the WMO Regional Office and Headquarters, and international partner agencies.

It took place from February 6 to 9 under the theme ‘Increasing Weather, Water and Climate Resilience in North America, Central America and the Caribbean’.

During the session, reports were presented by the Regional Chairs of various committees on past and upcoming activities for 2023/2024.