Central America launches its own”Google”of meteorology

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SAN SALVADOR, EL SALVADOR (21/JUL/2011) .- One of the most affected regions in the world for climate change, Central America, launched Thursday its meteorological database shared under a series of measures to prevent natural disasters.[ad#ad-468]

This “is the Google of American weather,” said technical director of the project, the engineer Norman Avila, to define the database that feeds information to one hundred and fifty stations in seven countries and has accumulated decades of historical information.

The shared information will allow better decisions to cyclones and other meteors, as “extreme hydrometeorological phenomena are the main threat facing Central America,” said Patricia Ramirez, head of the Regional Water Resources Committee, in charge of developing this database .

Mounted with the support of the Inter-American Development Bank, the base has between its first and main target for the agricultural sector, badly beaten by climate change.

The agricultural sector is the largest contributor to GDP in Central America and also the largest creator of jobs in the area.

The foundation works with information from nearly 150 weather stations in seven countries in the area. In total 116 of those stations provided historical data from more than 30 years.

In the last forty years of the twentieth century natural disasters in the isthmus left 57,000 dead, 123,000 wounded and 10 million displaced, according to a study by experts from European and Latin American universities.

Only Hurricane Mitch and other natural disasters between 1996 and 1999 cost U.S. $ 16,000 million and caused a reduction of 1.3% of GDP in the area.

In 2009, prior to COP 15 in Copenhagen, the Central American countries were estimated at 105,000 million dollars the damage suffered by climate change.

TAGS: Environment | Natural Disasters | Weather central america

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