Changing the weather enterprise by comprehensively and sustainably integrating social science into meteorological research and practice is the vision of an innovative workshop that took place for the first time in the Caribbean region. The Weather And Society Integrated Studies (WASIS) workshop was held in the Caribe Hilton Hotel of Puerto Rico during June 6-11 of 2010 with 23 participants from 13 different countries; including United States, St. Vincent, Jamaica, Mexico, Costa Rica, Barbados, Grenada, Guatemala, Trinidad, Antigua, Venezuela, Cayman Islands, and Puerto Rico. WASIS primarily is supported by NCAR’s Societal Impacts Program (SIP), NOAA’s U.S. Weather Research Program, the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs, NCAR’s Institute for the Study of Society and Environment, and UCAR’s Visiting Scientist Program. The Caribbean organizers were Tom Behler, Jeff Lazo, and Emily Laidlaw. The advisory committee was Jeff Cupo, Rafael Mojica, Walter Diaz, and Fernando Gilbes (GERS Lab Director). The workshop covered diverse topics related with weather and social science, like the importance of using common terminology, communicating risk, societal impacts, the role of served agencies, social research, vulnerability and resilience to weather and climate impacts, hurricanes, flooding, Tsunamis awareness, and many others. Also, the participants had several sections of groups’ discussion in which problems for the Caribbean region and their possible solutions were presented taking into account different countries perspectives and resources. The workshop definitely helped to create a network among weather and social experts of the Caribbean and will allow a better communication for future initiatives. Fernando Gilbes indicated “Thank you for the opportunity of being part of this extraordinary workshop. It was a great experience for me and I learned a lot. It is always a challenge to work with Caribbean people and the organizers did it very well. I am pretty sure that the WAS*IS seed was planted and will continue growing.”
