Caribbean seeks funding to upgrade weather services

Caribbean gov­ern­ments are push­ing for greater in­vest­ment in ear­ly-warn­ing sys­tems, up­grad­ed weath­er-mon­i­tor­ing in­fra­struc­ture and im­pact-based fore­cast­ing as lim­it­ed re­sources and age­ing equip­ment con­strain the re­gion’s abil­i­ty to pre­pare for in­creas­ing­ly se­vere cli­mate haz­ards.

The fund­ing chal­lenge emerged as a cen­tral is­sue at the 70th ses­sion of the Caribbean Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Coun­cil in the Turks and Caicos Is­lands, where World Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Or­gan­i­sa­tion Pres­i­dent Dr Ab­dul­la Al-Man­dous high­light­ed a $24-mil­lion Green Cli­mate Fund and Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Bank project to ex­pand hy­drom­e­te­o­ro­log­i­cal and mul­ti-haz­ard ear­ly-warn­ing ser­vices in Be­lize and Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The meet­ing is tak­ing place as world lead­ers gath­er in Turkey for COP31, where emis­sions tar­gets, cli­mate fi­nance and the pace of glob­al cli­mate ac­tion are un­der dis­cus­sion.