Presentation and preliminary evaluation of the operational Early Warning System in Cyprus

The Cyprus Early Warning System (EWS) and its validation are presented in this study. The EWS was developed within the framework of the Weather Risk Reduction in the Mediterranean project (RiskMed), the main objective of which is to warn the authorities and the public for severe weather phenomena, in order to minimise the impacts of weather related hazards. For the validation of the EWS, a comparison is made between the output of the system and the observations retrieved from 24 automatic weather stations operated by the Meteorological Service of Cyprus. From the validation, it resulted that the system underestimates the temperatures and overestimates the rain and the wind over Cyprus. These results can be attributed, firstly to the sea coverage of the study areas and secondly to the weakness of the weather model to represent topography. The EWS is a useful forecasting tool for local weather forecasters whose duties include the issue of warnings which are subsequently disseminated to the appropriate authorities acting for the safety of people and properties.