Mem­bers of the pub­lic can now de­ter­mine in ad­vance whether they need to keep their res­cue in­halers handy, pop more al­ler­gy meds, or if they will have to deal with hazy con­di­tions while dri­ving, with the launch of two new fore­cast prod­ucts from the Trinidad and To­ba­go Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Ser­vice (TTMS), fo­cussing on air qual­i­ty and dust haze.

The Met Ser­vice now has on its web­site the Sa­ha­ran Dust Haze In­dex Fore­cast and Air Qual­i­ty In­dex Fore­cast prod­ucts. 

“These new warn­ing sys­tems can as­sist per­sons to plan their day-to-day ac­tiv­i­ties and mit­i­gate im­pacts, such as flar­ing of al­ler­gies, when the air qual­i­ty be­comes poor or de­grad­ed,” the Met Ser­vice says in a re­lease.

The TTMS ex­plains it de­vel­oped these two ear­ly warn­ing sys­tems in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Caribbean In­sti­tute for Me­te­o­rol­o­gy and Hy­drol­o­gy (CIMH), based up­on a re­quest made by the pub­lic health sec­tor.

It is en­cour­ag­ing en­cour­age stake­hold­ers in the health sec­tor, as well as per­sons with ex­ist­ing res­pi­ra­to­ry and oth­er dust-sen­si­tive ail­ments to uti­lize the prod­ucts, which can be ac­cessed at its web­site, http://www.metof­fice.gov.tt/fore­cast

The new fore­cast prod­ucts were of­fi­cial­ly launched dur­ing the Four­teenth Na­tion­al Cli­mate Out­look Fo­rum (NCOF XIV), which was host­ed vir­tu­al­ly on Tues­day 17th May 2022.

Ac­cord­ing to the Met Ser­vice, both fore­cast prod­ucts are in­ter­ac­tive to some de­gree, and pro­vide warn­ing in­for­ma­tion on po­ten­tial haz­ardous air pol­lu­tion con­di­tions that can de­grade air qual­i­ty. They have been de­signed in ac­cor­dance with World Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WHO) and World Me­te­o­ro­log­i­cal Or­ga­ni­za­tion (WMO) stan­dards and guide­lines.

The sev­en-day Sa­ha­ran Dust Haze In­dex Fore­cast pro­vides a fore­cast dust-risk lev­el for each day as plumes shown at the top. When the user hov­ers over the plumes, the max­i­mum dust con­cen­tra­tion val­ue for that day will be shown. It al­so pro­vides a fore­cast dust-risk lev­el for every three hours over the next sev­en days, at the bot­tom of the im­age. The page al­so has meta­da­ta, a leg­end and sug­gest­ed ac­tions.

“Sa­ha­ran dust has be­come a se­ri­ous lo­cal con­cern in re­cent times due the in­creased fre­quen­cy of dust haze days and its sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on hu­man health, the en­vi­ron­ment, and so­cio-eco­nom­ic well-be­ing,” the TTMS re­lease points out, ob­serv­ing that the coun­try cur­rent­ly is at the peak of the Sa­ha­ran dust sea­son.

The Met Ser­vice notes the Air Qual­i­ty In­dex Fore­cast is of a sim­i­lar na­ture to the dust haze in­dex but is based on the fore­cast max­i­mum con­cen­tra­tion of par­tic­u­late mat­ter 2.5 (PM2.5) over a 24-hour pe­ri­od.

“These new prod­ucts are based on mod­el fore­cast out­put on­ly, and do not con­sid­er lo­cal­ized sources of dust or par­tic­u­late mat­ter from for ex­am­ple: in­dus­tri­al emis­sions, bush fires, traf­fic emis­sions, and oth­er lo­cal sec­ondary dust or par­tic­u­late mat­ter sources,” the Met Ser­vice ad­vis­es.  “There­fore, they may not al­ways match lo­cal ob­served lev­els.”