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Today marked the opening of the 14th Annual National Climate Outlook Forum at the Biltmore Plaza in Belize City. The two-day, all day event, organized by the National Meteorological Service of Belize, brings together key stakeholders to review the country’s upcoming seasonal climate outlook. Led by Chief Meteorologist Ronald Gordon, the forum features presentations on expected rainfall patterns, temperature trends, and possible tropical cyclone activity for the upcoming season. Held annually, the event serves as a platform for sharing climate information and forecasts to support national planning and preparedness. The information shared is intended to help decision-makers prepare for climate-related hazards such as hurricanes, flooding, and drought. Chief Meteorologist Ronald Gordon explains the importance of the forum.
Ronald Gordon, Chief Meteorologist, National MET Service: “The purpose of it is to gather our stakeholders in what we call the climate and weather sensitive sectors. That’s like in agriculture and the energy sector, water resource management, your BWS, energy of course, because these sectors are impacted by what happens in terms of climate. So we are presenting to them one of the things is to present the outlook to them, what we expect for the next six months, especially given the context of the El Niño that we are facing and therefore to see what would be their impact on their sector and how best they can prepare for those impacts. Another component is for us to get feedback from our stakeholders on how we are doing. We are producing a lot of information but we don’t know if that information is useful, relevant. So we want to hear from them in terms of how useful that information is, what we can do to improve it and so forth, so that it may become more relevant and applicable to their sectors. I can tell you now that we’re expecting the well the El Niño has been declared and one potential impact is that for there to be less rainfall. It doesn’t mean that you won’t have those sudden downpours that we had last week affecting the south but it means that you’ll also have extremes so we go from very a short period of very heavy rainfall and what you have seen since then is an extended dry spell. So people need to be prepared for those type of impacts.”
The forum also featured presentations from climate experts, including Senior Climatologist Shaena Young, who shared data and observations gathered throughout the past year.
Shanea Young, Senior Climatologist, National MET Service: “Every year we review what happened in terms of the climate for the previous year. So I presented on the rainfall, temperature as well as drought forecast and anomalies that occurred last year. Last year fortunately for us, even though we did have some extreme events such as heat waves and flooding in some areas, there wasn’t any significant climate event that occurred that causes significant losses. But we tend to do that review because we need to know where we are in terms of the climate and then it helps us to anticipate the future actions, especially given that this year we have the newly developed El Niño, which we know in Belize has significant impacts. It varies across sector and El Niño, well for us in Belize, it typically means dry conditions, more droughts, heat, it can also mean more extremes. So we saw last week we had a severe extreme rainfall event those are some of the things that we can expect with an El Niño phenomenon developing in Belize.”
The National Climate Outlook Forum continues tomorrow with additional presentations and discussions, including updates on regional climate drivers such as El Niño, as stakeholders prepare for the months ahead.
English (US) ·