Fmr. weather boss returns to head CARICOM centre

There are few among us who will easily forget the successive onslaught of storms named Mitch, Keith, Iris, and Chantal. But unknown by people my age, an earlier generation lived through a similar experience, beginning in the mid 1970’s. The big names of that era were Carmen, Fifi, Hermine, and Greta…and the man who guided us through those anxious days was Chief Meteorologist Kenrick Leslie. Guess what? Kenrick Leslie–Dr. Kenrick Leslie, that is–is back…maybe for good.

Kenrick Leslie, Dir., CARICOM Climate Change Centre

“I left here the day after independence. I make sure I was in Belize for its independence. I wanted to complete my PhD in meteorology. I was very fortunate that I got hooked up with the Allied Signal Corporation and they decided to pay for me to complete my research work. And as such, I shifted gears and went into laser physics with the purpose of applying it to remote sensing of the atmosphere.”

After working on both civilian and military applications of lasers, including advanced research on star wars technology, Leslie returned to his meteorological roots, with studies of air turbulence and how it can be detected by pilots. In late 2003 fate intervened when Leslie returned to Belize to attend the funeral of his old colleague Justin Hulse. At that event he was approached by Chief Meteorologist Carlos Fuller, who, prior to Hulse’s death, had been appointed Interim Director of the CARICOM Climate Change Centre, headquartered in Belize. With Fuller having to fill in as C.M.O. and unable to handle two jobs at once, he asked Leslie to consider taking over the newly established regional institution. Leslie agreed to take a leave of absence from his post in the States and as of December first, has been on the job in Belmopan.

Kenrick Leslie

“Right now the centre is involved in all aspects of climate change. It is the administrative centre where we look at different programmes, one, from a strictly climatologically point of view, how do we model climate change that we can pass that information to decision makers and policy makers in the next ten, twenty, fifty years from now. That’s one of aspect of it. But also you have the risk assessment. We also have the mitigation assessment, which encompasses not climate directly, but the impact of climate on say the economics of a country, the livelihood of people, where we locate buildings, what type of structural policies we have to put in place.”

Although Leslie is interim director there is a good chance that the permanent post is his if he wants it. The scientist has until May to decide whether or not to return to his employer, the Honeywell Corporation, in the United States.