Government has invested $2.5 million to purchase four AutoNaut Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USV) to enhance Barbados’ early warning system.
And, the first of these, called “The Sabu”, is already operational and was used to inform officials of potential wave heights during the passage of Hurricane Tammy over the weekend.
Minister of Home Affairs and Information, Wilfred Abrahams, unveiled the second vessel, called “The Wilfred”, during a launching ceremony at the Barbados Coast Guard (BCG) base on the Mighty Grynner Highway on Monday.
He noted that the vessels, manufactured by a United Kingdom company, will allow Government and the public to view the weather and marine information in near real time to help support decision making processes.
“Improving the observations to the east of Barbados, where most of the bad weather essentially comes from, will help forecasters here in Barbados improve on our weather predictions and early warning for synoptic scale weather events,” Mr. Abrahams said.
He added that the data gathered from the vessels would also aid in the research of weather and marine related events by providing the means of verification of forecasts and improvements to numerical weather simulations.
To do so, the Minister said, the vessels will add additional high value data to the data assimilation numerical weather predictions which the BMS has been testing over the past year or so.
Mr. Abrahams pointed out that Government felt it prudent to improve the remote and in situ observational network of this country, and within its Economic Exclusive Zone, particularly after the numerous significant weather and marine related events that were observed over the past few years
“These improvements started with the upgrade of the weather radar, along with the numerous weather stations installed across the country back in 2021. Now, we are advancing our monitoring further into the marine space of Barbados’ Exclusive Economic Zone, which will effectively extend our monitoring and by extension enhance our early warning systems,” Mr. Abrahams stated, noting that Barbados has been advancing its early warning systems.
Director of the Barbados Meteorological Service (BMS), Sabu Best, said the process started one and a half years ago and involved the BCG and the National Conservation Commission.
He added that the journey to launching the USVs was long, and there were some challenges encountered along the way. These, he said, came mainly from strong currents and the presence of Sargassum seaweed, which posed a problem for the BCG and its resources.
However, he noted that it was very useful during the passage of Hurricane Tammy. “We just experienced Tammy passing to the north. We used that opportune time to pull data in to have a look to see how useful the data is.
“It really was useful when Tammy was passing to the north. Useful in terms of verifying swell heights and having a look at the wind intensity to the east of Barbados. So, it is already starting to prove that it can work,” Mr. Best said.