Trinidad and To­ba­go’s Per­ma­nent Rep­re­sen­ta­tive with the World Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Or­ga­ni­za­tion and Act­ing Di­rec­tor of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice has stressed that com­mu­ni­ties in low-ly­ing coastal zone and in close con­nec­tion with coastal en­vi­ron­ments, as is the case for Caribbean Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing States (CSIDS) are par­tic­u­lar­ly ex­posed to a shrink­ing cryos­phere and re­lat­ed down­stream im­pacts and pro­ject­ed changes and risks on the ocean, such as sea lev­el rise and ex­treme sea lev­el.

He made in­ter­ven­tions at the 19th World Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Con­gress, dur­ing the ses­sion on Strate­gic Ini­tia­tives on pri­or­i­ties to ad­dress glob­al and re­gion­al im­pacts of changes in the Cryos­phere, which was held on May 31 in Gene­va, Switzer­land.

He point­ed out that there is a need to strength­en and in­crease fo­cus on the down­stream im­pacts, from a shrink­ing cryos­phere, par­tic­u­lar­ly with re­spect to re­sources for mon­i­tor­ing of sea-lev­el rise and ex­treme weath­er events that af­fect SIDSs coastal com­mu­ni­ties, go­ing fur­ther to urged the WMO to em­pha­size the need for en­hanced gov­er­nance, mon­i­tor­ing, and con­text-spe­cif­ic and in­te­grat­ed re­spons­es that will en­able im­proved de­liv­ery of ser­vices in line with pri­or­i­ties to mit­i­gate the down­stream im­pacts from a shrink­ing Cryos­phere.

He high­light­ed the chal­lenges that Na­tion­al Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vices of Small Is­land De­vel­op­ing States (SIDS) are fac­ing with re­tain­ing ap­pro­pri­ate­ly qual­i­fied staff and sup­port­ed the pro­pos­al for fur­ther ex­pan­sion of the cur­rent WMO fel­low­ship sys­tem to in­clude more par­tic­i­pants from SIDS, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the ex­pec­ta­tions of the Ear­ly Warn­ing for All Ini­tia­tive be­ing led by the WMO.