The third meeting of the Pacific Islands Climate Services Panel was held in Port Vila, Vanuatu from 21-23 March 2016. The meeting discussed a range of key issues to progress climate information and services in the region including the discussion and guidance on the options to setup the Regional Climate Centre (RCC), the second Pacific Island Climate Outlook Forum (PICOF-2), progress on the National Climate Outlook Forums (NCOFs) in PNG and Kiribati and the development of the Regional Climate Roadmap.
There was also an information exchange on the various developments and related meetings attended by members of the PICS Panel. SPREP provided updates on the PMC-3, the Nuku'alofa Ministerial Declaration for Sustainable Weather and Climate Services and provided updates on the Pacific Climate Change Centre.
About the PICS Panel
The PICS Panel was endorsed by the second Pacific Meteorological Council (PMC-2) meeting in July 2013 and was established in early April 2014 at the SPREP/WMO workshop on implementing the Global Framework for Climate Services in the Pacific, in Rarotonga, Cook Islands.
The PICS Panel aims to ‘Improve coordination, continuity and integration of projects, programmes and initiatives that support climate services at national, regional and global levels; strengthen the basic and core functions and capabilities of NMHSs[NW2] for robust and sustained data collection & management, analysis of data and quality assurance, production and dissemination of products, research and modeling; enhance avenues and modes of multi-way communication and feedback between climate services providers and users to enhance the uptake and use of relevant and tailored climate services down to the communities and individuals.’
Members
The PICS Panel consist of technical members from the National Institute of Atmospheric Research (NIWA), Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) National Oceanography and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), University of the South Pacific (USP), Secretariat of the Pacific Community (SPC), World Meteorological Organisation (WMO), member of the WMO RA-V, Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP), the Water Community represented by the Samoa Water Resources Division and the National Met Services of Palau, Niue and Vanuatu.
Andrew Tait representing the RA-V and NIWA was unanimously re-elected during the meeting as the Chair of the Panel and Samuel Maiha from the PNG National Weather Services was also re-elected as the Vice Chair. The new members invited to join the Panel are Meteo-France and the Tonga Ministry of Agriculture.
The third meeting of the PICS Panel was support by the WMO through a Canada Project managed by SPREP.
Meeting attendees (back row from left): Henry Taiki (WMO), Philip Malsale (VMGD, Vanuatu), Mafutaga Leiofi (MNRE, Samoa), Salesa Nihmei (SPREP), Jens Kruger (SPC), Sunny Seuseu (SPREP) and (front row from left): Samuel Maiha (NWS, PNG), Andrew Tait (RA-V/NIWA), Netatua Pelesikoti (SPREP) and Janita Pahalad (BoM).