Caribbean and European Delegates Collaborate on Climate Services

The Global Gateway Coordination forum for the Caribbean Basin has ended here with the delegates from the Caribbean, Central America and Europe agreeing in principle to join forces in strengthening the provision of meteorological and climate services.

The collaboration meeting was one of the segments of the overarching 2026 Wet/Hurricane Season Caribbean Climate Outlook forum (CariCOF) stakeholder forum which ended here on Thursday.

During the forum on the provision of these services, the regional and international experts representing the areas of climate change, meteorology, natural hazards and emergency management, took the common position and committed to working together to ensure the dissemination of accurate forecasting and monitoring of weather and climate phenomena, communicating risks and essential information to the early warning systems (EWS).

Principal of the Barbados-based Caribbean Institute of Meteorology and Hydrology (CIMH), Dr David Farrell, announced a proposal by his agency to send groups of young potential scientists to Europe this year as part of an initiative to upgrade their skills and competencies for improved outcomes.

Farrell said he agreed to a suggestion made to him by the executive secretary for the United States-based Regional Water Resources Committee, Maximilliano Campos Ortiz,, to extend the collaboration and consultations beyond the English and Spanish-speaking Caribbean to include the Dutch and French.

“When we started this conversation last April discussions on collaboration started last April, this is kind of where we wanted to get…this level of agreement for collaboration, peer-to-peer in medits (Medical Information Technology Services]. I know Shawn Boyce (of CIMH) will be going over to JRC in a week’s time. And as part of his initial in medits step…we had some people over in January or December last year.

“But,“I also want to put an offer on the table. We’ve got the embedded offer on the table if you are going to exploit itt. I also want to put an offer on the table that I send a number of young people to Europe. They are going to owe me big at the end of this. Let me be very clear what I expect on the issue…that they come back with the knowledge of doing things with regard to their thesis work,” Farrell said.

The CIMH’s principal explained that this is how knowledge will be built in the region, to have these young people go and see and build a relationship.”

He said he was looking forward to sending three people from the Mona campus of the University of the West Indies (UWI) in Jamaica as well as three others from the CIMH center in Barbados.