Costa Rica’s tsunami warning center says it will stop round-the-clock monitoring of the country’s coasts on Jan. 1, 2027, unless the government and lawmakers restore funding cut from public universities in next year’s budget. The National Tsunami Monitoring System (Sinamot), run by the National University (UNA), has served as Costa Rica’s tsunami alert center since April 2014.
It is the team that assesses, within minutes of a major earthquake in the Pacific or the Caribbean, whether waves headed for Costa Rica pose a danger. In a statement released yesterday, Sinamot said a staff position funded every year since 2018 will not be financed in 2027. Coordinator Silvia Chacón said the program, which currently has three or four staff members, would be left with two people, one working three-quarters time and the other half time.
Chacón said that would make it impossible to fulfill the center’s main purpose of alerting the country when a tsunami could strike its coasts. With that staffing, several hours of each day would go unmonitored, and the center says it would have to suspend real-time threat analysis. The university links the cut to the government’s proposal for no increase in the Special Fund for Higher Education (FEES) in 2027, and to further reductions in the Legislative Assembly. UNA Rector Jorge Herrera told Sinamot that the staff reduction followed both decisions, according to the center.
The Assembly’s budget committee approved a motion shifting â‚¡8,048 million (about $17.6 million) from the five public universities to the Ministry of Public Education to cover employer obligations to the teachers’ pension fund. The measure must still clear the full legislative process.
Much of Sinamot’s work never makes headlines because it consists of ruling threats out. In 12 years, the center has evaluated more than 900 events with tsunami potential. Eight produced tsunamis recorded in Costa Rica, three required preventive measures such as suspending water activities, and five were seen by people on the coast.
Sinamot official Kristel Espinoza described one case in which the U.S.-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center warned that waves of 1 to 3 meters (3 to 10 feet) could reach Costa Rica. She said the national team analyzed the data within 15 minutes and determined that no evacuation was needed.
International centers issue general warnings for entire ocean regions, and those warnings require local evaluation to determine what they mean for a specific coastline. Recent events handled by the center include the Tonga volcanic eruption in January 2022 and the earthquake off Kamchatka, Russia, in July 2025.
The center has also worked with more than 70 coastal communities, produced tsunami hazard studies for both coasts and carried out site-specific analyses for Cahuita, Carrillo, Sámara, Tamarindo and BahÃa Potrero. It runs three to five tsunami drills a year. Sinamot has asked the government and the Legislative Assembly to adopt measures that would keep the tsunami alert service running through 2027, and says a solution guaranteeing the staff it needs must be in place before January.
No public response from the Ministry of Finance or the National Emergency Commission had been reported as of yet. The warning adds to concerns raised by other university-run public services, including the national road-quality laboratory LanammeUCR, which has said a â‚¡250 million (about $550,000) cut will affect its oversight work.
