31 August 2009
Former U.N. Chief Annan’s Weather Initiative Proving Successful
Automated weather stations being built in Africa’s Great Lakes region
Geneva — Much-needed automated weather stations are going up around the Great Lakes region of East Africa thanks to a diverse partnership, a brisk African cell phone trade and an initiative called Weather Info for All launched in 2008 by Kofi Annan, president of the Global Humanitarian Forum and a former U.N. secretary-general.
Weather stations observe atmospheric conditions and provide data for weather forecasts and for those who study weather and climate. Africa has a network eight times below the World Meteorological Organization’s minimum recommended standards. Fewer than 200 automatic weather stations there meet WMO observation requirements, and there are fewer than 300 stations in total.
Europe, North America and parts of Asia each have several thousand weather stations. Measurements taken include temperature, barometric pressure, humidity, wind speed, wind direction and rainfall.
“Climate science is not an academic exercise but of life-changing — indeed life-saving — importance to hundreds of millions of people,” Annan said August 31 during the first day of the World Climate Conference-3 in Geneva.
“The focus must be relentlessly on how to help those at the frontline of climate change,” he added. “We cannot hope to manage climate change unless we measure it accurately. And this information must, much more than now, shape global, national and local policy solutions to the problems caused by changing weather patterns.”
The other partners, who plan to install 5,000 automatic weather stations at new and existing mobile network sites across the continent over the coming years, are: WMO; Ericsson, a leading provider of telecommunications equipment and services; Zain, a mobile telecommunications company operating in the Middle East and Africa; and the Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York.
At a side event during the conference, Walter Fust, chief executive of the Global Humanitarian Forum, said the initiative’s first phase was finished in June. Fust said the weather stations can be seen on Google Earth. The partners are also seeking funding.
“$30 million could cover the whole continent,” he said.
The initiative will massively increase crucial information that can be used to predict and manage climate shocks. The first weather stations were installed near the Great Lakes of Africa, a series of lakes in and around the Great Rift Valley. They include the area around Lake Victoria, where 5,000 people die every year because of storms and accidents.
Approximately 70 percent of Africans, or close to 700 million people, rely on farming for their livelihood and more than 95 percent of Africa’s agriculture depends on sufficient rainfall. Changing weather patterns due to climate change render obsolete traditional knowledge relating to agriculture that was otherwise reliable for centuries, creating a great need for meteorological information.
The partnership will use the increasingly widespread penetration of mobile phones in Africa to send weather information to users and communities, including remote farmers and fishers. And it includes funding to national meteorological services for training and technical assistance.
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