By: Staff Writer
May 16, 2025
The Bahamas Aviation, Climate and Severe Weather Network Ltd (BACSWN) added the final piece to its historic $427 million puzzle yesterday with the signing of a Heads of Agreement (HOA) for a cloud based Advanced Weather Processing System with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and US Department of Commerce in Washington DC.
Robert Carron, BACSWN’s founder, said at the historic signing yesterday that: “I wanted to change the way weather is visualized, and also to be able to give real time to the southern islands of our Bahamas. I would never have dreamt that it would become this much. But this is a combination, the final piece of a $427 million project for aviation and climate monitoring and severe weather tracking and sensing.”
The agreement includes installing advanced weather systems and training local meteorologists, with hopes for future knowledge exchanges and deeper collaboration.
Signaling his special thanks to Prime Minister Philip Davis, along with Minister for Trasport and Energy, JoBeth Coleby-Davis and Minister for Agriculture, Jomo Campbell, Carron said that the agreement would have not been possible without their help and intervention in working with US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, who gave his blessings on the partnership between BACSWN and NOAA.
This initiative dates back to 2023 when BACSWN first met with Roelof Bruintjes of the U.S. National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Colorado, who began arranging the partnership for BACSWN’s weather and flight tracking system with NOAA.
The HOA, which allows Sky Miles Ltd, the holding company that owns BACSWN, to purchase a $728,000 Cloud Based Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System (AWIPS) and Hazard Services Application from Global Systems Laboratory (GSL) NOAA to help it track weather formations and flight patterns coming through Hurricane Alley in The Bahamas. AWIPS will also provide the tracking mechanism for flights coming through Bahamian airspace, which is seen as the key lynch-pin to making the weather tracking system work because it would need the capacity to track flights and pull data directly from flight patterns.
Curtis Alexander, Deputy Director of Global Systems Laboratory (GSL) and Acting Director of GSL, said that they will be providing support and training to BACSWN with the AWIPS system. This would also allow the BACSWN to produce in-flight products, inclusive of Airmen’s Meteorological Information and Significant Meteorological Information and allow it to function as a full service meteorological watch office.
Carron also highlighted the collaboration’s importance, noting that 90 percent of Bahamian visitors come from the U.S. and the project’s $427 million investment will capture all of that passenger pass through. The partnership aims to improve weather models, support aviation safety, and increase airspace capacity by 30 percent.
Steve Thur, Assistant Administrator for Oceanic and Atmospheric Research and Acting NOAA Chief Scientist, also said: “I’m actually really excited for a couple of reasons. The first is, my team has let me know about the amount of time that we’ve put into getting us to this point, and I want to reflect on that and also to celebrate it.
“I understand it was over a year ago that we had a first discussion between BACSWN and NOAA about what we could potentially do together, and it’s taken us a while to get here.
“In prepping for this, I’ve learned a couple of things I was not aware of until very recently, that 90 percent of the visitors to the Bahamas come through the United States or from the United States, and so this partnership is certainly going to advance what you all can do for those that are traveling through Bahamian air or into the Bahamas and the surrounding Caribbean areas.”
Thur added: “It’s also important for us, because of the data that’s going to be shared in improving our models, and given the importance of tropical cyclones, hurricanes and tornadic activities, we’ve got an opportunity to combine private sector expertise with some of the foundational capabilities that we have. And I see this as a true win-win.”