New equipment installed to measure sea level rise
In the midst of a record heat wave it is not difficult to convince any Belizean that our world is getting hotter. But the potential peril of global warming goes beyond mere comfort. For coastal countries like Belize it could take the form of rising seas and flooding caused by the melting of the polar ice cap. In order to know how serious the threat is we need to first scientifically establish exactly what’s going on. To that end some new and sophisticated meteorological equipment has been installed at the Belize City Port.
The Automatic Weather Station is the fourth of its kind to be installed in Belize. But what sets this station a part from the others at Half Moon Caye, Hunting Caye and Middle Caye, is its state of the art tide measuring equipment.
Carlos Fuller, Chief Meteorologist
“Using an optical sensor, which looks down at the water and measures the height of the water, above where the sensor is. What we are seeing here is the latest technology in automatic weather stations.”
Ministers of the Caribbean became very concerned when they heard about the perils of the Caribbean countries to sea level rise and they said that we must address that problem. So we are now starting to monitor sea level rise because one of the projections by global models indicate that we could see a three foot rise in sea level in a hundred years. If the sea level should rise three feet in a hundred years it means that Belize City would be underwater. We would not be living in Belize City a hundred years from now. To address that problem we must first start to monitor it. If it is occurring then we need something to mitigate the effects of climate change.
Plans are also underway to see how a similar weather station can be installed on Calabash Caye. Dwight Neal is the Coordinator of U.C.B’s Marine Research Centre.
Dwight Neal, Coordinator, U.C.B. Marine Research Centre
“We have people going out with temperature loggers and things at the moment. We don’t really have a tide gauge and I don’t think the real gauge is functional, but we have people physically going and collecting the data. Getting something like this would be a significant plus.”
The Automatic Weather Station was installed by United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, along with technicians from the Caribbean Met Institute and Belize’s Met and Hydrological Services.
Signals from the solar powered weather station are sent via satellite to collection points in the Unites States and then put out on the Internet. The website is located at cpacc.org. The regional project is being funded by the World Bank and Global Environmental Fund of the United Nations.
