IASCLIP trip #2 July 7-8

Colombia and the Dominican Republic

Participants:  Art Douglas, Michael Douglas

As in Colombia, the purpose of this trip was to contact institution(s) that can potentially benefit from working with IASCLIP and which can help IASCLIP do a better job through the establishment of a useful cooperative framework.

In the Dominican Republic Mike Douglas and Arthur Douglas had meetings for two days at ONAMET – the Dominican weather service.   The first day there were many members of different institutions such as the Red Cross, Climate change panel, Geological institute and members of the Agrometerological, Forecast, and Climatological offices within the weather services.   One of their main interests is the forecasting of hurricanes and a good part of their effort is aimed at this.  Their offices were fairly well organized and the equipment was also up to date.  They operate 24 hours a day in contrast to the Colombian weather service.   The climatologiy office is the largest and they have many people working in this area.  The data is all being digitized and quality control takes place as well.   They have a rain gauge network composed in part of volunteers. They have 10 automatic stations, 5 of them at airports.  The radar in Santo Domingo is not working and funds are needed to get it going again.  The radar in Punta Cana is operated in part with funds from the tourism consortium.

Overall they seem willing to cooperate with any research project and seemed especially interested in any activity that would entail more training or education.

Art and Caridad Perez, the person in charge of the climate office, met to discuss the problem of the data transmission.  They have the same problem as in Colombia where data for more stations is being sent than what gets into the models.  

National network of climatic and agrometeorological stations in Dominican Republic.