All-Members Approach to Project Coordination on Early Warnings in the Caribbean

By Arlene Laing, Kenneth Kerr and Haley Anderson of the Caribbean Meteorological Organization

The coastal regions, small-island states and territories of the Caribbean are highly exposed and vulnerable to natural hazard, especially weather, climate and water-related hazards that can have cascading and compounded adverse impacts on people, the environment and the regional economy (Rozenberg et al. 2021). The hazards include hurricanes and tropical storms, heavy rainfall, floods, landslides, excessive heat, drought, storm surge and hazardous seas. Most of these recur yearly with varying impacts across the region. Access to timely and actionable early warning information can help to protect and save lives and assets and can contribute to the development and implementation of adaptation, preparedness and response strategies to build resilience and reduce related losses and damages (WMO 2022). The Caribbean Meteorological Organization (CMO) headquarters, in alignment with WMO, has a strategic priority to “enhance disaster preparedness and reduce losses of life and property from extreme hydrometeorological events and severe weather”. CMO – CMO Headquarters and the Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology (CIMH) – is using an all-Members umbrella approach to strengthen early warning systems (EWS).

Since its origins as the British Caribbean Meteorological Service in 1951, CMO has been ensuring that there is a regional severe weather warning system by coordinating and supporting the operations of the National Meteorological and Hydrometeorological Services (NMHS) of its Member (Figure 1). CMO also advocated for the establishment of the WMO Regional Association IV (RA IV, North and Central America and the Caribbean) Hurricane Committee. Today, that Committee has a multidecade record as a successful tropical cyclone warning system, and provides a foundation for building Early Warnings for All in the Caribbean.

Figure 1. CMO creating an enabling environment for EWSs since 1951

CMO and Météo-France Martinique have been leading management of the WMO Severe Weather Forecasting Programme (SWFP) Eastern Caribbean since 2016. The Programme aims to ensure a severe weather warning system for non-tropical cyclone weather – heavy rainfall, strong winds and rough seas/swells – that occur throughout the year. Under the Programme, CMO has been supporting regional efforts to improve observations, forecasting, information dissemination and communication, preparedness and response capabilities at national and local levels; EWS governance at the national and regional levels; and disaster risk knowledge at the national and local levels. These efforts align with the requirement for effective EWS: foundational legal instruments, concrete operational strategies with specific actions and national activities in line with the legal foundation and strategy. Thus, CMO has hands-on experience and the enabling environment of collaboration and coordination at the regional and national levels that are essential to support the Early Warnings for All initiative. 

2018 (left) and 2023 (right) floods in Trinidad and Tobago (courtesy TTMS, CMO and TTMS RA HC 2024)

Early Warnings for All

WMO and the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR), co-leads on the Early Warnings for All initiative, define four essential pillars for people-centred end-to-end Multi-Hazard Early Warning Systems (MHEWS): disaster risk knowledge; detection, observation, monitoring, analysis and forecasting; warning dissemination and communication; and preparedness and response capabilities. Since the announcement of the initiative, the work programme and regional initiatives of CMO have been adjusted to be inclusive of these components, which also support the goals of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030.

The overarching CMO strategy is to implement multiple related activities that meet Members' needs and build their capacities. This strategy enables CMO engagement in parallel activities that ease the burden on its Members to achieve the 2027 deadline set by the United Nations for providing Early Warning for All. The biggest challenge is to coordinate all of the activities seamlessly and cohesively to boost the EWS capabilities in all the NMHS, which in turn will boost the regional EWS, creating a domino effect that will ease project implementation.

This approach allows CMO to maintain and monitor progress towards achieving its overarching goal for Members, as well as progress towards the goals of each Member, and to assist in problem-solving for individual Members in a group setting. For example, the CMO Operational Radar Group (CORG) supports the maintenance of the Caribbean radar network, critical infrastructure for monitoring and forecasting heavy rainfall and severe weather, through knowledge sharing and building a community of practice. It also saves
CMO and its Members precious time and ensures that all Members realize a set of core early warning capabilities – leaving no Member behind.

The regional and country-specific projects aim to identify and close gaps while growing the expertise, capacities and skills of national and regional experts and NMHSs in the 16 Members. CMO is, thus, facilitating effective implementation of MHEWS by all of its Members and supporting stakeholders in shaping national and regional
EWS (Figure 2).

Figure 2. CMO creating an enabling environment since 2020, through projects.

Most CMO projects are complementary and build on existing EWS initiatives. In some instances, CMO is scaling-up country-specific capacities through explicit needs assessment, in others it is ascertaining the current status of the EWS to distill technical, financial and institutional gaps to target resources, training and general capacity building
opportunities on needs. The CMO methodology has resulted in limiting stand-alone projects and enabled national activities that feed into larger national and regional capabilities to deliver EWS. CMO has focused on growing capacity and expertise in weather radar operations and maintenance, on improving the exchange of meteorological data and the generation of EWS, and on facilitating the expansion of early warning information generation and dissemination by expanding institutional and legal arrangements.

WMO, Trinidad and Tobago Red Cross, Ministry of Rural Development and the local government’s Disaster Management Unit joining forces with support from CMO, Trinidad and Tobago Meteorological Service, and the Office of Disaster Preparedness and Management to install food level markers in a rural community in eastern Trinidad, May 2023. (Photo: Haley Anderson, CMO)

Activities

The implementation includes events such as the ground-breaking WIS 2.0 training workshop held at CMO headquarters in collaboration with WMO, which strengthened weather observation capacities and data exchange in support of Members’ activities to enhance access to Early Warnings for All. The workshop honed the data collection skills of 19 meteorological professionals, representing 14 CMO Members, thus enhancing the availability of weather observation data in real-time, an essential step for improving weather prediction.

Another example is the CMO development of a model hydrometeorological legislation and a model meteorological policy through the Climate Risk and Early Warning Systems (CREWS) initiative Nine Members received assistance for adapting the model bill to their national circumstances and CMO is assisting NMHSs that have no existing legal frameworks to develop fit-to-purpose legislative frameworks and policy documents. 

A third example is the Common Alert Protocol (CAP) training and implementing workshops, organized in 2023 in collaboration with the WMO, CREWS, and the NMHSs of Belize and the Turks and Caicos Islands in both countries (MeteoWorld, 2023). Operational forecasters, disaster preparedness practitioners, and staff from other agencies involved in closing EWS gaps and disaster risk management advanced their knowledge and skill in CAP implementation in the workshops. CMO also organized workshops on marine meteorological services in both Trinidad and Tobago in collaboration with CREWS and WMO (MeteoWorld, 2023). In close collaboration with the in-country Red Cross Society, NMHSs, water resources and disaster preparedness and management agencies. CMO also implemented several activities to enhance capacity and preparedness with regards to flood management in a flood-prone community in Trinidad and Tobago (MeteoWorld, 2023).

Overarching all of these activities, CMO has contributed to the production of a people-centred “Strategic roadmap for advancing MHEWS in the Caribbean”. The Roadmap was developed under the World Bank component of the CREWS Caribbean project as a tool to boost early warning services in the region.

Haley Anderson, CMO, helping a young rural community member in Trinidad to place flood level reference points that will help the flood-prone community to know when to evacuate or to seek shelter on upper floors, May 2022. (Photo: Stephanie Gallasch, WMO)

National strategic plans and frameworks

CMO is also contributing to the development of national strategic plans for meteorology, as well as the national frameworks for the provision of weather, climate and water-related services, by its Members. These will provide NMHSs with mechanisms for collaboration with national institutions to improve MHEWS, impact-based warnings, and the tailoring, delivery and use of EWS and of weather, climate and water-related predictions and services for decision-making as fostered by the Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS). CIMH, as the WMO Regional Climate Centre for the Caribbean, has implemented the GFCS at the regional level by establishing the Early Warning Information Systems Across Climate Timescales (EWISACTS), a consortium of the regional organizations with responsibilities in the five GFCS target areas – disaster management, water resources, agriculture and food security, public health and renewable energy – as well as in tourism, a major economic sector in the Caribbean. The lessons learned from the regional level implementation are being applied to develop the national frameworks for weather, climate, water and marine services. Tailored early warnings and weather, climate and water services improve understanding of risks and help stakeholders to mitigate impacts and implement better preparedness and response, building resilience.

These frameworks, when fully implemented, will strengthen national and regional responses when weather, climate and water extremes threaten. More people will have access to early warning information and services at local and national levels. This will permit NMHSs to meet a key Sendai Framework target: to substantially increase the availability of and access to MHEWS and disaster risk information.

WIS 2.0 workshop at CMO Headquarters

Further deliverable

CMO led the project that developed the Caribbean Severe Weather Case Database of severe weather events, their features and related impacts. The Database is to be used for meteorological diagnostics and for tracking losses and damages associated with severe weather and climate events in the region. It holds promise for advancing understanding of the factors that influence these events, for the evaluation and improvement of weather forecasting and for assisting meteorologists with identifying processes that are key to forecasting and warning of pending severe weather hazards on different time and spatial scales.

The CMO approach outlined above has crystalized all activities into a coordinated whole that is comprehensive and effective for implementing national and regional EWS in the region. All of the foregoing activities are part of an all-CMO Members approach that was facilitated by arrangement between WMO and CMO. The approach consolidated CREWS funded projects under the strategic theme of “Building Resilience to High-Impact Hydrometeorological Events through Strengthening Multi-Hazard Early Warning Systems in Small-Island Developing States (SIDS)”.

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References

Rozenberg, J.; De Vries Robbé, S.; Kappes, M.; Lee, W.; Prasad, A. 2021. 360° Resilience: A Guide to Prepare the Caribbean for a New Generation of Shocks. © World Bank, Washington, DC. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/36405 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.

World Bank; Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery. 2023. A Strategic Roadmap for Advancing Multi-hazard Impact-based Early Warning Systems and Services in the Caribbean. © Washington, DC: World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/40058 License: CC BY-NC 3.0 IGO.”

World Meteorological Organization (WMO), 2022: Early warnings for all: Executive Action Plan 2023–2027, 50pp.

MeteoWorld, June 2023, Enabling sustainability for Early Warning Systems in the Caribbean (page 7) and CREWS Caribbean Project Delivers on Marine Services and Flood Management (page 6)