RedCLARA News - 2004/2010

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO), a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN), "is the UN system's authoritative voice on the state and behaviour of the Earth's atmosphere, its interaction with the oceans, the climate it produces and the resulting distribution of water resources". WMO is the institution behind the First Workshop for the South American Region (WMO RA-III) that will take from December 8th to 11th of 2008 at ESPOL, in the city of Guayaquil (Ecuador).

The WMO will lead a series of regional workshop on climate monitoring and climate watches that will constitute a leverage in achieving the goal of enhancing climate monitoring capabilities for the generation of higher quality and new types of products and services. These activities also aim at building capacity of National Meteorological and Hydrological services as well as of the regional climate institutions in the regions in need.

The first of its kind, the RA-III workshop (RA-III: South American Region) on climate watches was recommended by the WMO - Comission of Climatology (CCl) - Implementation Coordination Team, that met in Switzerland, in October 2007 (http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/wcp/cca/documents/doc6Climatewatch26_09_07.pdf).

The Workshop is sponsored by WMO and ESPOL. It will address the implementation of climate watches in the region based on the existing infrastructure and expertise at national and regional level. The ultimate goal is to ensure that National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs) and regional climate institutions make use of best practices in delivery, provision and evaluation of climate watches, and implement best practices in managing efficiently and seamlessly the interaction among the three involved parties: Regional Institutions, NMHSs and end users.

The objectives of the WMO RA-III are:
-Address the need for climate watches in the region,
-Review the status of climate monitoring and long range forecasting capabilities at regional and national level,
-Review and discuss Climate watch showcases from the region and from abroad,
-Work on tailoring the WMO guidelines on climate watches to the region needs,
-Recommend best practices for the region in issuing climate watches,
-Recommend best strategies towards users of climate watches,
-Develop an action plan to implement climate watches at national and regional level,
-Recommend a follow-up mechanism on the implementation of climate watches.

The expert in Meteorology and Professor of the Faculty of Marine Engineering and Sea Sciences of ESPOL, Dr. José Luis Santos (PhD) is the Coordinator of the Local Organizing Committee of the WMO RA-III. We talked to him about the Workshop and the possibilities for participation in it for CLARA members.

In your opinion, what is the crucial relevance of this event?
Climate change is a popular topic and it's not exclusive of a group of scientists as it cuts across all levels of society. There isn't practically a single day in which we do not hear on the news about some emergency caused by extreme climatic events. This is an evidence of the increasing impact of climate on our way of life. On the other hand this is a global issue and therefore its solution has to be global as well. This is why it is important that relevant people from all over the world (and I don't mean only meteorologists, but society as a whole) jointly deal with this issue, hence the importance of this event since we will have first-class scientists from all over the world, sharing their experiences with "users" from other fields.

How could CLARA members participate in this Workshop?
As I said before, the climate change issue affects us all, and must be addressed from a regional perspective. This is why it is important that networks such as RedCLARA get involved in order to develop applications in a more efficient way.

What is in your opinion the state of the art of the research and the developments on Climate in Latin America?
There are several institutions which have made big efforts to improve the state of the art in the area of climate research within our region, but maybe one of the key shortcomings is the fact that these developments have not been extensively disseminated within the region.

Date and Place

The Meeting will be held at the Campus "Gustavo Galindo" of the Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral (ESPOL) in Guayaquil, Ecuador, from 8 to 11 December 2008, and will be conducted in English only. In addition, several main conferences will be transmitted simultaneously using Advanced Internet (by means of the connection of CEDIA, the Ecuadorian NREN, to RedCLARA).

The complete information about the Workshop can be download in PDF format in the following URL: www.redclara.net/doc/2008/CWS_PresentationPaper18_07_08.pdf

More information:
- The World Meteorological Organization
- Technical document on "Climate Watches" referenced in WCDMP-No. 58/WMO/TD-No.1269, and available in electronic format at the WMO website at: http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/wcp/wcdmp/documents/GuidelinesonClimateWatches.pdf.
- ESPOL
- CEDIA