NEW COURSE FOR SCHOOL STUDENTS AND TRAINERS

Cooperative Projects
The CIMH is involved in a number of cooperative projects with various training and research institutions. The goals of these cooperative efforts are to enhance the training and research capability of the Institute and to upgrade the knowledge and skills of its staff through the use of new technologies. The CIMH is also involved in a number of development projects in the region, working with various funding agencies. These projects utilise the expertise of the staff in a wide range of fields.

Below is a summary of some of the projects in which the CIMH is currently involved.

Current Projects

CARIWIN

The Caribbean Water Initiative(CARIWIN)is a collaborative project, designed designed by the Caribbean Institute for Meteorology & Hydrology(CIMH), Caribbean Partners Governments, and McGill University's Brace Center for Water Resources Management to address the complex challenges of water management in the Caribbean Region. CARIWIN's objective is to promote sustainable and equitable integrated water resources management(IWRM)in the region. This will be achieved through the strategy of strengthening the capacity of CIMH, as a regional institution, to provide training and capacity development in water resources management to CARICOM member states, and through the CIMH, to propagate capacity building initiatives in IWRM at the national, local and community levels in three pilot countries - Jamaica, Grenada and Guyana. The CARIWIN project will increase the relevance and reach of CIMH while testing,developing and disseminating new capacity development and community goverance models in IMRM throughout the Caribbean.

The Canadian Meteorological Centre

This project with the Canadian Meteorological Centre (CMC) is aimed at the promotion of technology transfer and at improving the knowledge and abilities of the Institute's staff in the development and implementation of NWP models, as well as the interpretation of the model output and its use and application to forecasting in the tropics. The project also provides an opportunity for CMC to get some feedback on the performance of their global model in the tropics.

The CMC provides the CIMH with output data from its global model which is used in both research and training. The emphasis of the research is on the systems such as tropical waves and tropical cyclones.

RAMSDIS

The RAMM Advanced Meteorological Satellite Demonstration and Interpretation System (RAMSDIS) is a PC-based unit developed by the Regional And Mesoscale Meteorological (RAMM) team at CIRA.

The RAMSDIS program is aimed at providing the US National Weather Service’s (NWS’s) Forecast Offices with high quality, digital satellite data directly from NOAA’s NESDIS server. The program has been extended to include two WMO RMTC’s, the CIMH and the University of Costa Rica Department of Atmospheric Sciences (UCR).

Both CIMH and UCR have been equipped with workstations for use in research. With assistance from the RAMM Team the CIMH has analysed a number of case studies. One such study is the October 1996 floods in St. Lucia. A web-based presentation is near completion and will be made available to all meteorological services when completed. The case studies have also been used for training in the use of single and multi-channel imagery in detecting clouds and weather systems.

The CIMH is also currently using the digital satellite imagery to develop cloud climatologies for the region.

It is expected that the CIMH will soon have direct access to the NESDIS server on an hourly or half-hourly basis via the Internet to obtain satellite data.

ACCC

The Adaptation to Climate Change in the Caribbean (ACCC) project is funded by the Canadian Climate Change Development Fund (CCCDF) through the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). This project is intended to maintain the momentum on climate change issues started under the now-ended Caribbean Planning for Adaptation to Climate Change (CPACC) project.

One of the nine components of this project focuses on strengthening the technical capacity of national and regional institutions in response to gaps and needs identified in the first three years of the CPACC program. To this end the CIMH is benefiting through staff training and development aimed at strengthening its climate change capacity, among other things.

Meanwhile the Institute is providing technical assistance to the project as it undertakes the rescue of hydrological data from several of the countries in the Eastern Caribbean. A preliminary assessment of the data to be rescued has been completed and initial data rescue has started.

SIDS Caribbean Project

The Small Island Developing States (SIDS) Caribbean Project, a project funded by the Government of Finland, aims to provide tools for better planning for sustainable development in the Caribbean region, by strengthening the National Meteorological Services so that they are able to provide information needed for planning purposes at national and international levels, and to make the respective countries capable of fulfilling international commitments.

There are six components in the project:

The CIMH will benefit from the activities in some of these components leading to both institutional strengthening and capacity building. At the same time the CIMH will contribute to the project by providing technical and other support and advice.

The Institute has received some computers for use in the training programme and in the upgrading of its climatological database. A new telecommunications system will be provided and the technical laboratory for the calibration and maintenance of instruments is being refurbished and upgraded.

The Institute is providing technical assistance and support in the implementation of the data rescue and climate database management components of the project. The CIMH is also assisting in the facilitation of the upgrade to the instrument laboratory. In addition, the CIMH is mounting special training courses, as well as hosting others, for the project.

GECAFS

The Global Environmental Change and Food Systems (GECAFS) is a new, interdisciplinary research project involving a wide range of social, physical and biological scientists, investigating the vulnerability of human food systems to, and interactions with, Global Environmental Change. It is sponsored by three major international research Programmes: the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP) and the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), and is being developed in collaboration with the CGIAR, FAO and WMO. The GECAFS goal is “To determine strategies to cope with the impacts of Global Environmental Change on food provision systems and to analyse the environmental and socioeconomic consequences of adaptation”.

Regional research projects are now being developed in close collaboration with the local policy-making and scientific communities to ensure that research results will contribute directly to the information needs of the region’s policy formulation. One of these projects is being developed for the Caribbean region with emphasis on CARICOM countries.

The CIMH is participating in the proposal writing team for GECAFS Caribbean Food systems project.