Monday, April 6, 2009

Jamaica, the Bahamas chosen for climate study

Jamaica and the Bahamas has been selected for a pilot project studying the effects of climate change on the Caribbean.

The study is part of a project called CARIBSAVE, which is conducted by the University of Oxford and the Caribbean Centre for Climate Change. The project aims to raise US$35 million over the next three to five years to study the effects of climate change and its effect of tourism in the region.

The UK Department for International Development recently contributed 240,000 pounds to the project, and part of that seed funding will be used for the six-month study in Ochos Rios, Jamaica, and Eleuthera, Bahamas.

As reported in The Eleutheran News, the study will provide a blueprint for climate and adaptation modelling, as well as vulnerability screening, that can be used across other tourist destinations in the Caribbean.

Destinational data collected between 1961-2008 will be assessed to calculate the islands' likely climate until 2100. Likely levels of rainfall, windspeed, rising sea temperatures and levels as well as the frequency of hurricanes will be predicted.

The CARIBSAVE project is intended to inform policy planning not just in the tourism sector but also in health, energy, agriculture and infrastructure to name a few.

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