Jean-Marc Ram­per­sad

Cli­mate Change Ed­i­tor

jean-marc.ram­per­sad@guardian.co.tt

Im­prove­ments to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice’s (TTMS) Ear­ly Warn­ing Sys­tem may be com­ing soon. On Tues­day, the TTMS held its first Stake­hold­er Con­sul­ta­tion, held at the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment in Tacarigua.

In at­ten­dance, both vir­tu­al­ly and in per­son, were of­fi­cials from the TTMS, ODPM, Min­istries of Health, Pub­lic Util­i­ties, Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts, as well as rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the Dis­as­ter Man­age­ment Units, me­dia, avi­a­tion and ma­rine sec­tors.

Many stake­hold­ers agreed that the TTMS should cap­i­talise on sys­tems al­ready in place, such as the Pub­lic Alert No­ti­fi­ca­tion Sys­tem (PANS) which utilis­es au­to­mat­ed email, What­sApp, voice calls and Short Mes­sage Ser­vice (SMS). It was fur­ther sug­gest­ed that a TTMS What­sApp chan­nel be added to their mes­sage dis­sem­i­na­tion plat­forms, sim­i­lar to oth­er Gov­ern­ment agen­cies re­cent­ly.

The lead time, or the time be­tween the is­suance of the alert and the on­set of an event, was ques­tioned by many stake­hold­ers. The TTMS rep­re­sen­ta­tives col­lec­tive­ly in­di­cat­ed that trop­i­cal weath­er is very dy­nam­ic and can have lead times less than one hour in some cas­es. How­ev­er, with plans of im­proved and up­grad­ed sys­tems (satel­lite and radar), the TTMS aims to im­prove over­all lead time when ap­plic­a­ble. There are al­so pro­vi­sions for the var­i­ous lead times for events (Alerts, Watch­es and Warn­ings), which are not be­ing used un­less there is an ap­proach­ing cy­clone. The TTMS in­di­cat­ed that they will re­vis­it the struc­ture of its Ear­ly Warn­ing Sys­tem, tak­ing the lead times in­to ac­count.

Giv­en our rapid­ly chang­ing weath­er con­di­tions, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing the wet sea­son, many agen­cies asked for an in­crease in the fre­quen­cy of ‘now­cast­ing’ up­dates. Now­cast­ing in­volves the short-term fore­cast­ing of weath­er, typ­i­cal­ly with­in the next few hours.

Al­so, the is­sue of per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties arose, and with the vi­su­al­ly-im­paired com­mu­ni­ty in mind, voice record­ings (au­dio) was asked to ac­com­pa­ny the Alerts. This has been done on few oc­ca­sions since the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the colour-cod­ed sys­tem in 2018.