Panama City, Panama September 29, 2009. CATHALAC, with support from the US EPA, NASA, Battelle and the University of Panama, jointly hosted a regional workshop on "Communicating Information on Air Quality in Central America" in Panama City, Panama. The workshop occurred from September 10-11, 2009, in the framework of the US EPA-funded "Urban Air Quality Management Program in Central America" project which involves CATHALAC, Battelle Memorial Institute, Sonoma Technology, Inc., the University of Panama, and other partners, and had the participation of some 40 representatives, from Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, and the USA.

The workshop's main objective was to follow up on work that has been conducted in the last year and a half in the framework of the 'SERVIR Air' initiative, and to explore the dissemination of air quality information within Central America. SERVIR Air is a component of the Regional Visualization & Monitoring System (SERVIR), which provides Mesoamerica with satellite-based monitoring and forecasts of the region's land, sea and air, implemented by CATHALAC jointly with USAID and NASA.

During the workshop, representatives from Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Panama presented on their national experiences in monitoring air quality. Technical presentations were made by CATHALAC, Battelle, Baron Advanced Meteorological Systems (BAMS), Sonoma Technology, Inc., and the University of Panama, on both progress made and ongoing work in providing Central America and the Dominican Republic with near-real time, historic, and forecast data on changing air quality, at both regional and local scales. This information will be of significant benefit to regional decision-makers and the public in general, with regard to taking action on days when the quality of the air might affect those with respiratory problems such as asthma.

Over the past year, within the context of SERVIR Air (http://www.servir.net/aire), a Mesoamerica and Caribbean 'Smog Blog' providing multiple analyses each week of satellite data on air quality has been implemented. In the past few months, the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model developed jointly by BAMS and other partners has also been implemented within SERVIR, taking advantage of CATHALAC's MM5 modeling capacities. The CMAQ model provides forecasts of regional air quality (specifically particulate matter and ozone concentrations) within Mesoamerica and the Caribbean for the next twenty-four hours. During the workshop, air quality data from a monitoring station in Panama City also came online in SERVIR, also providing access to local data on air quality. Through support of the US EPA-funded project, it is expected that the near-real time data from other countries will also be integrated into SERVIR in the coming months.

In addition to technical presentations, the workshop's participants recognized the importance of the data now available through the SERVIR platform and took part in lively discussions on the way forward in making the general public aware of those information resources. The two day workshop was capped off with a press event to update the public in general on progress made over the past year on SERVIR Air since the initiative's launch at the 2nd GEOSS in the Americas Symposium in September of 2009. That press event featured presentations by CATHALAC, Battelle, the University of Panama and BAMS.

For more information, please visit http://www.servir.net/ or http://www.cathalac.org