RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice has an­nounced plans to set up 100 weath­er sta­tions across the coun­try.

TTMS Di­rec­tor Sha­keer Baig re­vealed this at the of­fi­cial launch of AS­JA Girls Col­lege's state-of-the-art 3D-print­ed Au­to­mat­ic Weath­er Sta­tion (T15_AS­JA) on Wednes­day in San Fer­nan­do.

Baig said the sta­tions will pro­vide com­pre­hen­sive and ac­cu­rate weath­er da­ta to sup­port ef­fec­tive pol­i­cy-mak­ing and pub­lic safe­ty mea­sures.

Baig ex­plained that the new weath­er sta­tions, pro­duced through a part­ner­ship with the Na­tion­al Ocean­ic and At­mos­pher­ic Ad­min­is­tra­tion (NOAA), will be strate­gi­cal­ly placed in tra­di­tion­al­ly da­ta-sparse ar­eas. "We have so far de­ployed al­most 15 of these sta­tions and my ob­jec­tive is to have more than 100 de­ployed be­fore June 2025," Baig said.

He added: "These sta­tions will gath­er da­ta on rain­fall, tem­per­a­ture, hu­mid­i­ty, and, in some cas­es, at­mos­pher­ic pres­sure. They are much more eco­nom­i­cal than tra­di­tion­al weath­er sta­tions, cost­ing around US$1,000 each, and are so­lar-pow­ered with teleme­try ca­pa­bil­i­ties."

Mean­while, for­mer Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona who de­liv­ered the fea­ture ad­dress un­der­scored the crit­i­cal need for re­li­able da­ta in ad­dress­ing en­vi­ron­men­tal and so­cio-eco­nom­ic chal­lenges.

"In this coun­try, we have the tai­lor­ing of in­for­ma­tion da­ta. It's what we do in Trinidad when it comes to em­ploy­ment. They say yes, we have a low un­em­ploy­ment rate but that da­ta doesn’t re­flect this be­cause there are thou­sands of in­di­vid­u­als who are un­der-em­ployed, not to men­tion there are thou­sands of per­sons who live be­low the pover­ty line," Car­mona said.

He lament­ed the cur­rent da­ta de­fi­cien­cies which hin­der in­formed de­ci­sion-mak­ing.

"We tend to be very scep­ti­cal of our da­ta. Da­ta is not gath­ered to make peo­ple look bad but to spur peo­ple to do what is right to meet na­tion­al de­vel­op­men­tal goals. Look at the is­sue of trans­porta­tion. Our pro­duc­tiv­i­ty is chal­lenged be­cause of the num­ber of hours we spend on the road. Yet we don’t have da­ta on how this loss of time im­pacts on pro­duc­tiv­i­ty," he said.

He al­so lament­ed the lack of re­search on coastal ero­sion.

"Look at, for ex­am­ple, Ce­dros and Ica­cos," Car­mona not­ed. "Is there any da­ta on what is hap­pen­ing there? Trinidad and To­ba­go is like a gym boot, and we fail to rec­og­nize that we are los­ing some of those toes in that area. Look at Los Iros, a beach where I once walked 400 me­ters out to sea at low tide, and the wa­ter would be waist-high. I can no longer do that. Hous­es I once stayed in are now in the sea."

Car­mona em­pha­sized the ur­gency of col­lect­ing da­ta on land ero­sion and ris­ing ocean heights. "If we don't get up and get, we will be dri­ving on coast­lines in one foot of salt wa­ter," he warned, high­light­ing the triple plan­e­tary crises of cli­mate change, bio­di­ver­si­ty loss, and pol­lu­tion.

Mean­while, the head of the Mod­ern Stud­ies De­part­ment Nailah Ho­sein said the AS­JA Col­lege's T15_AS­JA, was the on­ly school-based me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal sys­tem in the coun­try which links di­rect­ly to the T&T Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Sta­tion in Pi­ar­co.

She said the cut­ting-edge tech­nol­o­gy en­abled re­al-time mon­i­tor­ing and served as a valu­able ed­u­ca­tion­al tool for stu­dents.

School prin­ci­pal Aliyah Amars­ingh-Mo­hammed said the launch al­so in­tro­duced the Car­bon Ze­ro In­sti­tute of Trinidad and To­ba­go's (CZITT) Weath­er App. She said this app will pro­vide re­al-time weath­er da­ta to help stu­dents with their School-Based As­sess­ments (SBAs) and pro­mote a cul­ture of da­ta-dri­ven de­ci­sion-mak­ing and en­vi­ron­men­tal aware­ness.