WATER, Environment and Climate Change Minister Matthew Samuda says as the country continues to grapple with the impact of climate change, the Government is ramping up the data-gathering capacity of several entities to, among other things, enable it to start officially calculating the cost to the economy of heat as a hazard.

“Data is the friend of policy and if we want to make good policies we need as much data as possible. It’s why we have already gone to Cabinet for approval for the Planning Institute of Jamaica (PIOJ) to purchase a supercomputer.

“They are doing the final scoping of what will be required for that, so it has been approved in terms of yes, proceed and build out this project. That computer will generate models that we absolutely need,” Samuda told editors and reporters at a recent meeting of the Jamaica Observer Press Club.

Samuda was responding to observations by professor of climate science and dean of the Faculty of Science and Technology at The University of the West Indies, Mona campus, Michael Taylor during Jamaica’s National COP30 Consultation in 2025.

Taylor had argued then that with heat being the new menace, there was a need to “cost out what heat is doing” to the economy.

At the time Taylor pointed out that while the Table of Impacts produced by the PIOJ — which mapped droughts, hurricanes, and tropical storms between 2000 and 2024 — showed an increase in unplanned disruptions, there was no cost recorded for heat unlike the other variables, even though it was included in the list.

In giving credence to Taylor’s call, Samuda said, “I think his call is correct. There can be no debate that heat and excessive heat has an impact on the ageing population and has an impact on learning in classrooms that were built many times in the cold war as shelters, so they were overbuilt in some cases to take hurricanes and as potential bomb shelters, especially the older ones, so the walls are very thick, they are very hot and that must be impacting educational results as well.”

He told Observer editors and reporters that real efforts are being taken to ensure that Jamaica can progress in this direction which includes laying the necessary groundwork.

“You should be well aware that Jamaica has a systemic risk assessment tool, the first in the developing world, meaning that we have evaluated thousands of points of data relating to infrastructure and that tells us what climatic impacts will be felt with particular factors.

“So when you run the Hurricane Melissa factors in that system, the damage is predicted almost perfectly accurate in that regard. So when you say: ‘With a storm surge of x, rainfall of that, wind of this, where will be washed out?’ It is able to show you a model which resembles almost 100 per cent what would take place,” Samuda outlined.

“We have systems that are running both with the Water Resource Authority (WRA) and the Meteorological Service that require particular computing capacity if we are to have real-time assessments of what is happening,” Samuda added while pointing out the existence of the system developed in 2023 which predicts bushfires.

“So the first thing we absolutely need to do even before we get into the costing is to have the ability to track what is happening in real-time and to run these models with software that in some cases exist and some that we need to tailor for our own needs,” the minister said.

“The first thing is to make sure that WRA can pull up on their phone any time of day [and see] what is the current situation with their hydrological flows, Met Service at any time of the day should be able to tell me what the current rainfall and the current heat is, without having to manually check. So we are developing our systems with that in mind and that all needs to go into significant computing capacity to run the sort of models that when we come here we would maybe just print a booklet and say this is exactly what is happening and what will be,” said Samuda.

In May meteorological assessments presented at a meeting of the National Drought Management Committee revealed that the country could face alternating periods of intense rainfall and severe dryness throughout the year, increasing the likelihood of flash flooding, prolonged dry periods, and higher temperatures and resulting in agricultural stress, water shortages, and bush fires.

Later that month the Met Service said it was closely monitoring climate indicators suggesting the possible development of a major El Niño event and warned that it could bring hotter and drier conditions to the island in months to come.

El Niño is a natural climate pattern that occurs when sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean become unusually warm. This shift can disrupt normal weather systems around the world, often reducing rainfall in parts of the Caribbean while increasing temperatures and the likelihood of drought conditions.

The Met Service at the time warned that if the projected conditions materialise, Jamaica could experience reduced rainfall during the summer period and into the peak of the main rainy season in October. It said this could strain water supplies, disrupt agricultural production, and increase heat stress on crops and livestock.