GEORGETOWN, Dec 5, 2008 (AFP) - A pan-Caribbean early warning weather radar-system is nearing completion, a senior Caribbean Meteorological Organization (CMO) official said Friday. Through the multi-million dollar project, a series of digital radar stations, each with a 400-kilometer (250 mile) radius, will allow forecasters to monitor weather including hurricanes, a major concern for the region. CMO Coordinating Director Tyrone Sutherland said the 16.6 million dollar project has seen the construction of digital Doppler weather-radar stations in Guyana, Barbados, Trinidad and Belize.
Those stations are now being integrated with similar stations at the European Space Agency (ESA) in French Guiana, as well as in Martinique, Guadeloupe and St Martin. So minute-by-minute data from all the Doppler weather-radar stations will be relayed to a central point in Martinique for retransmission to all meteorological services and the public via satellite, he said. The information will be available "minute by minute as it progresses as opposed to satellite where you get images every thirty minutes," Sutherland told AFP.
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