Arletty White Morales
A new Automatic Meteorological Station, EMA, was installed at the Cayo Coco Coastal Ecosystem Research Center, CIEC, acquired by the International Collaboration Project “Disaster risk reduction and adaptation to the effects of climate change in the face of the dangers of floods and droughts in north-central Cuba affected by Hurricane Irma, Euroclima +.
Financed by the European Union through the French Agency for Development, AFD, and implemented by the United Nations Development Program, UNDP, in Cuba, it has several sensors to measure meteorological variables (temperature, speed and direction wind, solar radiation, relative humidity, atmospheric pressure, precipitation) updating the data every 10 minutes.
Abelardo Sánchez Hernández, CIEC meteorological observer, states that modern technology, being unassisted, humanizes work and makes it easier to forecast and warn more accurately about the occurrence of extreme meteorological phenomena such as drought and floods.
Since its acquisition, assembly and commissioning, it has had the participation of specialists from the Provincial Meteorological Center, collaborators, workers from the Construction and Assembly Company, UEB Obras Various Norte and staff from the scientific institution where it is located. Euroclima +, and Its areas of intervention are the provinces of Ciego de Ávila and Camagüey.
Through it, the Provincial Meteorological Center, about to turn 39 on November 1, has received five EMAs, of which two are already installed (Florencia and Cayo Coco), with Primero de Enero, Bolivia and Falla pending. In this way, monitoring coverage is increased by reaching municipalities that do not currently have a conventional station.
They will also receive a series of computer, technological and transportation resources that, together with the EMAs, will make it possible to strengthen meteorological surveillance and the Early Warning System in the province.