METEOROLOGICAL SERVICE, JAMAICA J AMAICA ’ S D ROUGHT TOOL Glenroy Brown 10 th May 2017
Acknowledge Our Champions • JMS • RADA • CIMH • IRI • USAID
PROBLEM…. Local Context • Jamaica’s agricultural sector accounts about 7% of the island’s GDP and employs about 20% of the workforce. • Agriculture in Jamaica is largely rain-fed (94%) especially for small farmers. Changes in rainfall pattern. • Forecast for longer and more frequent droughts by 2050.
Forecast demonstrate the requisite skills needed for delivering trustworthy and reliable forecast skill Bottom Up Approach 4
LI LIFE E WITHO HOUT UT THE D HE DROU OUGHT HT TOO OOL NOT OT AB ABLE LE T TO SE O SEE E THI HINGS S CLE LEAR ARLY LY
LI LIFE E WITH T H THE D HE DROU OUGHT HT TOO OOL SE SEE E THI HINGS S A A LI LITTLE LE BIT CLE LEAR ARER ER
Our Approach to delivering the best Drought Tool • Threat of Climate Change demands a more thorough approach in providing climate services. • We build on our experiences in providing weather and climate information to create customized services, like the drought tool, targeted at specific users. • In this way, the Drought Tool make it possible to incorporate science-based information into policies and practice to achieve real benefits for our stakeholders (farmers).
RESPONSE • Effective – Providing drought information at the community levels • Efficient – Providing timely drought information to inform decision making • Essential – Develop a drought tool that is absolutely necessary and extremely important to the end users, (farmers)
How Did the Met Office Respond In 2014 the Jamaica Meteorological Service together with Rural Agriculture Development Agency (RADA) developed a drought tool that is now been used to officially declared drought across island. 2014, we also trained experts from across the region through Caribbean Institute for Meteorology and Hydrology (CIMH)
Seasonal Drought Forecast (SPI) http://jamaicaclimate.net
Seasonal Drought Forecast (3D Map) http://jamaicaclimate.net
FREE SMS DROUGHT ALERT (For all farmers in our database) We realize that many of our user especially our farmers will not be able to access the report due to lack of internet. Therefore we develop a free SMS text message system to send the drought information to our users who don’t have access to the internet.
Impact of the Drought Impact of Drought and of Drought Information Service in Jamaica among sampled farmers 2013 2014 2014 2014 2014 production production, production, production production, farmers with farmers with farmers with climate risk, climate risk, climate risk farmer forum farmer forum + text only message
Take Away Message The Met Office will continue to be a champion for climate service in Jamaica and the region. Will continue to work with the farming communities to reduce the impacts of climate change on the sector by developing more climate smart early warning tools.
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