New Castle Grant System to boost BMS’ forecasting

Barbados now has top-notch ability to forecast weather with greater accuracy and prepare the public for potential hazards, with the official commissioning of the Barbados Doppler Weather Radar (261BBS) on World Meteorological Day on Wednesday.

Minister of Home Affairs Wilfred Abrahams said the US$3.5 million high-tech facility at Castle Grant, St Joseph will improve early warning and early action initiatives as he noted that without a radar Barbados was “essentially flying blind”.

“We depend on the National Hurricane Centre [in Miami] but Barbados needs to be in a position to calculate its own information to verify the modelling of other persons, to develop our own modelling, because whereas other international entities concentrate on the entire Caribbean with a focus on the United States and the east coast of the United States, it is in our best interest to develop our own system and our own independent analysis to allow us to be able to forecast what is happening,” he stressed.

The old radar dome, which Director of the Barbados Meteorological Services (BMS) Sabu Best said had major challenges including backup generator problems and a leaky roof, was dismantled a few weeks ago.

Best said the new system was critical in light of last year’s weather events, Hurricane Elsa and the freak storm in July, both of which damaged houses across the island.

“The frequency and intensity of tropical cyclones have been on the increase in our region over the past 10 years due to climate change and climate vulnerability. Therefore, projects such as this new weather radar are all the more critical for our national early response warning systems,” he said.

Minister Abrahams, who praised the team at the BMS for breaking new ground, highlighted some of the benefits of the new Doppler Weather Radar, including improved scanning strategies for better temporal and spatial representation of hydrometeorological events, the ability to better detect tornado-type activity, and provide additional confirmation of dangerous storms.

The BMS will also be able to better identify areas of heavy rainfall and estimate total precipitation, resulting in better flash flood detection.

Minister Abrahams noted that Barbados now has 43 monitoring stations across the island that enable officials from the Met Office to give current conditions related to temperatures, wind direction, wind speed and rainfall for specific communities. He is hoping to increase that number to 100.

“There are a lot of interesting things happening in Barbados climatically but we don’t know them because we haven’t been measuring them. We are now able to measure and identify where has the most rainfall, which areas in Barbados get rain every single day…. We can now check that and plot that.

“We cannot lose by having the most comprehensive information on weather and its climatic impacts across the entirety of Barbados, and we are well on the way to doing this,” Minister Abrahams said.

World Meteorological Day was observed under the theme, Early Warning and Early Action, and highlighted the vital importance of hydrometeorological and climate information for disaster risk reduction.
sandydeane@barbadostoday.bb