Beyond the Forecast: Caribbean agencies rethink how weather warnings reach the public

SEIGO­NIE MO­HAMMED

Cli­mate Change Ed­i­tor

As an­oth­er At­lantic hur­ri­cane sea­son ap­proach­es, me­te­o­rol­o­gists and dis­as­ter man­agers across the Caribbean are work­ing on a fun­da­men­tal shift in the way warn­ings are is­sued to the pub­lic.

The goal is sim­ple but po­ten­tial­ly life-sav­ing: move be­yond telling peo­ple what the weath­er will be and start telling them what the weath­er will do.

That con­cept known as Im­pact-Based Fore­cast­ing, is at the heart of a re­gion­al work­shop re­cent­ly held in Trinidad and To­ba­go, where rep­re­sen­ta­tives from more than 20 Caribbean coun­tries and ter­ri­to­ries gath­ered to strength­en ear­ly warn­ing sys­tems ahead of the 2026 hur­ri­cane sea­son.

For most Caribbean cit­i­zens, weath­er fore­casts have tra­di­tion­al­ly fo­cused on me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal con­di­tions: rain­fall amounts, wind speeds, storm tracks and sea con­di­tions. But ac­cord­ing to Adan­na Robert­son-Quim­by, Pro­gramme Of­fi­cer with the World Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Or­ga­ni­za­tion's Ear­ly Warn­ing Ser­vices Sec­tion, that in­for­ma­tion alone may not al­ways help peo­ple un­der­stand the risks they face.

"We have spent a lot of time re­al­ly drilling in­to the key con­cepts and ideas," Robert­son-Quim­by ex­plained. "What we were talk­ing about is im­pact-based fore­cast­ing. This is where you fo­cus on what the weath­er will do in­stead of what the weath­er is."

In prac­ti­cal terms, that means shift­ing from a warn­ing that sim­ply states heavy rain­fall is ex­pect­ed to one that ex­plains the con­se­quences: roads may be­come im­pass­able, homes could flood, busi­ness­es may be dis­rupt­ed and com­mu­ni­ties may need to evac­u­ate.

Turn­ing Fore­casts in­to Ac­tion

The work­shop brought to­geth­er me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal ser­vices and dis­as­ter man­age­ment agen­cies from across the Caribbean to ex­am­ine how weath­er in­for­ma­tion can be trans­lat­ed in­to mean­ing­ful pub­lic warn­ings.

Par­tic­i­pants ex­changed case stud­ies, best prac­tices and op­er­a­tional ex­pe­ri­ences while ex­plor­ing how im­pact-based fore­cast­ing can be in­te­grat­ed in­to na­tion­al warn­ing sys­tems.

A ma­jor com­po­nent of the dis­cus­sions cen­tred on the Com­mon Alert­ing Pro­to­col (CAP), an in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dard that helps au­thor­i­ties dis­trib­ute warn­ing mes­sages across mul­ti­ple com­mu­ni­ca­tion plat­forms.

Robert­son-Quim­by de­scribed CAP as the frame­work that de­liv­ers warn­ings, while im­pact-based fore­cast­ing pro­vides the in­for­ma­tion peo­ple need to act.

"Think about CAP more or less as the for­mat au­thor­i­ty mech­a­nism," she said. "Im­pact-based fore­cast­ing pro­vides that ac­tion­able in­tel­li­gence or ad­vice for peo­ple to fol­low."

To­geth­er, the two ap­proach­es aim to en­sure that emer­gency alerts are not on­ly de­liv­ered quick­ly but al­so pro­vide clear guid­ance about what ac­tions peo­ple should take.

Dif­fer­ent Coun­tries, Dif­fer­ent Jour­neys

While some Caribbean ter­ri­to­ries have al­ready ad­vanced sig­nif­i­cant­ly in de­vel­op­ing mod­ern warn­ing sys­tems, oth­ers are still in ear­li­er stages of im­ple­men­ta­tion.

Rather than view­ing these dif­fer­ences as weak­ness­es, Robert­son-Quim­by said the work­shop demon­strat­ed the val­ue of re­gion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion.

"Coun­tries are at dif­fer­ent stages in their ear­ly warn­ing ser­vices and sys­tem de­vel­op­ment process," she not­ed.

One of the work­shop's out­comes was the cre­ation of a re­gion­al com­mu­ni­ty of prac­tice where coun­tries can con­tin­ue shar­ing ex­per­tise and sup­port­ing one an­oth­er af­ter the event con­cludes.

For small­er is­lands with lim­it­ed tech­ni­cal re­sources, the op­por­tu­ni­ty to learn from neigh­bour­ing coun­tries could ac­cel­er­ate progress and avoid cost­ly mis­takes.

"There are a num­ber of coun­tries which are fur­ther along with their jour­ney," she said. "They are do­ing a lot of dif­fer­ent things, dif­fer­ent method­olo­gies, dif­fer­ent ap­proach­es for their ear­ly warn­ing sys­tems, and they were able to share that with coun­ter­parts in the Caribbean."

Cli­mate Change Rais­es the Stakes

The dis­cus­sions come at a time when Caribbean coun­tries are fac­ing in­creas­ing ex­po­sure to cli­mate-re­lat­ed haz­ards, in­clud­ing stronger hur­ri­canes, more in­tense flood­ing, droughts and coastal im­pacts.

Yet Robert­son-Quim­by stress­es that the move to­ward im­pact-based fore­cast­ing should not be seen as re­plac­ing tra­di­tion­al weath­er fore­cast­ing.

In­stead, it rep­re­sents the next stage in the evo­lu­tion of warn­ing sys­tems.

"Tra­di­tion­al fore­casts and warn­ing sys­tems cre­at­ed a foun­da­tion for where we are to­day," she said. "On­ly with those tra­di­tion­al mech­a­nisms are we now able to do im­pact-based fore­cast­ing."

The chal­lenge now is en­sur­ing that sci­en­tif­ic ad­vances are matched by stronger co­op­er­a­tion among me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal agen­cies, dis­as­ter man­agers, gov­ern­ments, telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions providers, me­dia or­gan­i­sa­tions and com­mu­ni­ties.

"Ear­ly warn­ing ser­vice de­liv­ery de­pends on peo­ple," she said. "It de­pends on co­or­di­na­tion, col­lab­o­ra­tion and part­ner­ships to make it hap­pen."

One Re­gion, Shared Risks

Per­haps the strongest mes­sage emerg­ing from the work­shop is that no Caribbean na­tion can strength­en re­silience alone.

Weath­er sys­tems do not re­spect na­tion­al bor­ders. A storm af­fect­ing one ter­ri­to­ry to­day may threat­en an­oth­er to­mor­row.

For that rea­son, par­tic­i­pants re­peat­ed­ly stressed the im­por­tance of re­gion­al co­op­er­a­tion in both fore­cast­ing and dis­as­ter man­age­ment.

"We are in one re­gion," Robert­son-Quim­by said. "The plan­et is dy­nam­ic. What­ev­er af­fects one coun­try may af­fect an­oth­er."

As Caribbean coun­tries con­tin­ue in­vest­ing in stronger ear­ly warn­ing sys­tems, of­fi­cials hope the pub­lic will ul­ti­mate­ly re­ceive clear­er, more time­ly and more use­ful in­for­ma­tion when dis­as­ter threat­ens.

The ob­jec­tive, Robert­son-Quim­by said, re­mains straight­for­ward.

"We work to­geth­er to en­hance these ear­ly warn­ing sys­tems and pro­mote sav­ing lives," she said. "It's the busi­ness of every­one to help save lives."