U.S. Ocean Agency to Help Build Sea-Level Network in Caribbean

By Cheryl Pellerin

As part of the ongoing international effort to strengthen early warning systems in vulnerable nations against a range of coastal hazards, the U.S. State Department and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are helping establish a sea-level observation network in the Caribbean Sea region.

Such a network would meet critical needs in the region for tsunami and coastal hazards early warning, safe navigation, sound coastal management and climate studies.

Under an interagency agreement, the State Department will provide $300,000 in funding and NOAA's National Ocean Service will work with an ocean agency or a weather agency in a to-be-determined Caribbean country to set up a multipurpose sea-level (tide) station and provide training in data collection, analysis and management.

The agreement is a partnership under the Third Border Initiative, which supports programs designed to enhance diplomatic, economic, health, education and law-enforcement cooperation and collaboration in the Caribbean region.

The initiative also supports increased funding for disaster preparedness and mitigation efforts to shield critical commercial and environmental infrastructure from natural disasters like hurricanes, storm surge and tsunamis.

CARIBBEAN NETWORK

The tide station, modeled after 200 such stations that are part of NOAA's National Water Level Observation Network, will have redundant sensors, communications and data-collection platforms, a full suite of meteorological sensors and a continuous Global Positioning System to monitor the station's position.

Under the agreement, which is effective until September 30, 2010, NOAA also will:

. Contribute to developing a regional design, an operational concept and a partnership strategy for the network.

. Help build regional capacity for collecting, analyzing and managing sea-level data. This includes installing one tide station, training, platform and system operations and maintenance, data management and product dissemination.

. Provide real-time water-level data to improve predictions and to issue early warnings of tsunami, storm surges and related hazards.

The new tide station and training will not be the only U.S. contribution to the coastal areas of the Caribbean. (See "Tsunami Early Warning System Takes Shape in the Caribbean ( http://www.america.gov/st/washfile-english/2007/August/20070817155419lcnirellep0.5727503.html ).")

"Our current contribution to a Caribbean network," Mike Szabados, director of the National Ocean Service's Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services, told America.gov, "are six tide stations in Puerto Rico and four stations in the U.S. Virgin Islands. They're in the Caribbean now and that information is available" to anyone in the region.

And until the Caribbean has a working tsunami warning system, NOAA, along with the Japan Meteorological Agency, is providing 24-hour interim watch services to the region from its Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii.

EARLY WARNING

A massive 9.1-magnitude earthquake and tsunami struck the Indian Ocean in December 2004, causing the loss of nearly 230,000 lives and leaving millions homeless.

Afterward, in Paris in 2005, the UNESCO Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) - already tasked with helping U.N. member states on the Indian Ocean rim establish a tsunami warning system - created a framework for developing regional early warning systems in the Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean and the Caribbean.

An in-depth assessment by the Caribbean IOC has shown that none of the operational stations in the region, outside U.S. territories, meets the requirements for multihazard warning and mitigation.

"What we're propose," Allison Allen, COASTAL - for Coastal Oceanographic Applications and Services of Tides and Lakes - product lead at NOAA, told America.gov, "is to take all the lessons we've learned in over 150 years of operating our tide stations and bring it down to the Caribbean, do capacity building activities and install a robust station that would be a foundation for a network that all of the countries right now are collaborating on and putting together."

Over the next several months, NOAA will decide which Caribbean country will host the station and with which ocean or environmental agency NOAA will partner to install the tide station and begin training.

Selection criteria, Allen said, include ensuring the station will address the broadest range of coastal hazards, partnership with a local ocean or meteorology agency, and logistics and political constraints.

NOAA's National Ocean Service has signed an agreement with the World Bank and is exploring partnership opportunities with the Caribbean Community Climate Change Centre, a recipient of World Bank funds to install 11 tide stations in the Caribbean region that will complement NOAA's efforts.

More information about the National Ocean Service's Center for Operational Oceanographic Products and Services ( http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/ ) is available at the NOAA Web site.

More information ( http://www.ioc-tsunami.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=36 ) about the regional tsunami warning systems is available at the UNESCO/IOC global tsunami Web site.

Source: U.S. Department of State

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