Meteorology against natural or technological disasters

Picture: file / Television Camagüey

The statistics demonstrate that every time are more people affected by the disasters related with the hidrometeorologics and climatic phenomena.

So much so that every year the extreme catastrophes represent 90 percent of the total of the disasters of natural origin in the world, where victims that surpass the room of million of people cause.

However, the knowledge in Cuba for its confrontation dates of from ends of the XVIII century, when the meteorological observations began.

Nevertheless, during many years the meteorological activity was limited to the description of some atmospheric phenomena, and the publication of data and general comments about the tropical climate.

The first scientific works in that sense happened at the end of the XIX century and principles of the XX, thanks to the employment of specialized instruments and to the establishment of the first observatories, those that carried out thematic studies on the time and the climate.

During the whole neocolonial period was not possible to organize a true national meteorological system, coexisting two main institutions, the National Observatory and the Observatory of the School of Belén, those that frequently were contradicted in its presage and valuations.

In 1948 the synoptic net of the National Observatory, belonging to Guerra Marina, had 21 stations of first and second order, some of them with modern instrumental modules that transformed it into one of the best services in the American region.

Alone after the victory of the Revolution, the Institute of Meteorology arose (INSMET) in September of 1965 like a dependence of the nascent Academy of Sciences of Cuba that gave step the integration of a true National Meteorological System, of civil jurisdiction, after more than two decades of military subordination.

Starting from then, with the collaboration of the World Meteorological Organization and the Hidrometeorologics Services of the formerly Soviet Union and other socialist countries, the INSMET became a strong technical scientific institution.

The fact is that combines the benefit of important highly specialized basic services with the realization of complex scientific investigations in the most diverse fields in the meteorology, the climatology, the physics of the atmosphere, the eolic and solar energy, among others.

INSMET has manual stations at the present time and automatic of surface, automated meteorological radars and towers of checking of the gradient of the wind.

Its qualified and experienced personnel, surpasses the thousand, of which 30 percent is university, with more than a hundred of Master and Doctors in Sciences. From the administrative point of view, possesses a National Center, resided in the ultramarine town of Casablanca, in the capital, and 13 Territorial.

In the 45 years lapsed from its foundation, it plays an essential part in the sustainable economic and social development of Cuba.

Attest this way its scientific-technicians contributions as regards the climatic change, in the experiments on the provoked rain, the systems of alert early for the drought and the forest fires and the studies of danger, vulnerability and risk.

Even, in the determination of the national eolic potential and the investigations for the use of the solar energy. José A. Díaz Duke / AIN)