by Charles Gladden

BELIZE CITY, Thurs. Mar. 23, 2023

The National Meteorological Service of Belize hosted a fair in the parking lot of the Belize Civic Centre today, Thursday, March 23, which is globally recognized as World Meteorological Day, and was observed this year under the theme, “The Future of Weather, Climate and Water across Generations”.

The purpose of the fair was to highlight the scientific advances that have been made throughout the past 150 years to improve the accuracy of the weather forecast and life-saving early warnings through monitoring, simulation, and projection.

Ronald Gordon, Chief Meteorologist at the National Meteorological Service of Belize, told Amandala that meteorology is a more technical field than it may appear to be.

“There’s a lot involved in the field. It starts with observation. Without knowing what’s going on in the weather we can’t predict the weather, so observation includes people looking at the clouds and telling you what kind of clouds, but also involves technology, automatic weather stations, reading temperature, rainfalls, and wind direction,” he said.

“… It involves observation from satellites in space, looking down upon indications of cloud formation, different weather systems, and the complicated numerical models that are developed to predict the weather. So, there’s a lot involved behind meteorology,” he added.

Gordon also highlighted that besides the day-to-day monitoring of the weather with all its technical machinery, they also predict the weather months in advance for the farmers in the agriculture sector.