The WMO Regional Climate Center-Washington for the WMO Regional Association IV

This paper discusses the WMO Regional Climate Center (RCC) – Washington for the WMO Regional Association IV (RA-IV), which encompasses North America, Central America, and The Caribbean. WMO RCCs are centers of excellence creating regional products to strengthen the capacity of WMO Members in a given region, to deliver national and local communities the best and most effective climate services. The objective of the WMO RCC – Washington is to generate and to deliver regionally-focused high-resolution data and products for the RA-IV. The target users are governments, public and private industry, climate-sensitive sectors, including agriculture, food security, energy, water resources, health, and transportation. The presentation highlights the mandatory functions of the RCC – Washington including sub-seasonal to seasonal forecasting, climate monitoring, data services, and training for the RA-IV region. Access to real time climate information is provided through the RCC – Washington website. The web page features model based sub-seasonal to seasonal forecasts, their verifications, and how this information is used for impact-based forecasts. Capacity building efforts and the First Training Workshop of the WMO RCC – Washington for the Lesser RA-IV region are also presented.