OREANDA-NEWS. Last week, from September 16 - 18, Vale was visited by a senior scientist from the US's National Centre for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Richard Carbone. He visited the Tubarão Complex and the city of Aracruz (Espírito Santo), where he examined and audited the equipment at the Capixaba Hydrometeorological Monitoring Centre (CCMH).

Created by Vale in partnership with the government of Espírito Santo, the CCMH will allow forecasts and hydrometeorological monitoring of the state's weather to be carried out more safely and further in advance, permitting preventative alerts to be provided to civil defence agencies and to Vale. During the visit, the specialist certified the system's equipment and approved the scientific direction of our work related to atmospheric monitoring.

One of the CCMH's main pieces of equipment, the Meteorological Radar, is the most modern of its kind in Latin America and contributes to the precision of meteorological reports and alerts. Each of the equipment's parts was evaluated by Richard Carbone.

This is the first time that the radar and the system as a whole have received international certification. In addition to the long-range (240 km) radar, the NCAR scientist verified other equipment belonging to the CCMH, including one of the 25 automatic weather stations, the super computer for data processing that runs advanced mathematical models, such as the University of Oklahoma's Advanced Regional Prediction System (ARPS), and the CCMH Control Centre.