Symposium 2013 Programme

Presentation 4

Application of GIS in Generating Weather & Climate Products – Cherise Haywood

Abstract

The use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) has greatly increased the processing potential of climatological and meteorological data. In Trinidad and Tobago, where climate and weather observations points are sparse, GIS has been introduced at the Meteorological Services Division for constructing and producing suitable spatial representation of the local climate variables. The study aim was to show the usefulness of employing GIS technology for displaying weather and climate products. The results confirm that in using an adequate number of climate and weather observation points, GIS can be useful and successful in creating and displaying spatial maps of climate variables. Ordinary kriging has proven to be a very effective method for interpolation of climate and weather data in ArcGIS. At the Trinidad and Tobago Meteorological Service (Met Office) ArcGIS has enabled user friendly and user specific products of practical value. The GIS tool has been used effectively to develop and display spatial maps for climatological seasonal and annual rainfall distribution, 3-category probability rainfall outlook, area specific seasonal rainfall totals and 10-day probability rainfall totals and user specific data request in a format suitable for analysis in a GIS environment.

Bio