TAHMO

News

Hi,

My name is Cyuzuzo Honore, a coordinator for TAHMO in Rwanda.

I had an idea of developing weather information service for student in Rwanda. The idea won me a grant.

It started at a challenging time in 2020: COVID-19 hit. In Rwanda, TAHMO activities (especially those that involved travelling) were disrupted. During the first months of COVID there was a lot of fear since only little information on the virus was available. But as days went by, these informations became available; we knew how to protect ourselves and eachother which reduced the fear we all felt at first. But still Rwanda – my country – was under travel restrictions.

Mid-August I got to know about LOOP ACCELERATOR – an incubation program for Education Startups. I have long had a vision to improve climate literacy in the younger generation. With motivation from TAHMO’s SCHOOL – 2 – SCHOOL program, I envisioned developing a climate information platform. My Idea was to was to develop a portal with this information, then add some climate change mitigation and adaptation skills on the online platform that will be accessible to Rwandan schools.

Severe Weather Consult, TAHMO’s sister company in Rwanda, has a platform called iHEWA, whose goal is to enhance accessibility of weather information services. Among the targets of the platform are the students – they interact, learn and experiment local weather data which enhances their knowledge on climate change mitigation and adaptation. We strongly believe education is an essential element of the global response to climate change.

I submitted my concept and it won a grant. I spent 3 months in Loop accelerator. It was great opportunity to share experience with other more than 10 startups in Education including some already in the market. It was also a milestone to let Rwanda ICT Chamber, GIZ, SMART Africa get to know what we are doing as TAHMO in closing the gap by providing accurate and efficient Meteorological data. In addition, Loop accelerator grant us 800 USD in total that helped us develop IHEWA Online platform (click to visit ihewa).

IHEWA will be as online library for climate literacy for young generation to start act on climate change action plan. Also, IHEWA will be like a tool for schools while they are teaching climate change mitigation and adaptation. A vast online platform that will be including climate science lesson plans, climate change mitigation and adaptation skills and climate change risk reduction tips.

In the Lake Kivu region, water erosion is the main driver for soil degradation, but observational data to quantify the extent and assess the spatial-temporal dynamics of the controlling factors are hardly available. In particular, high spatial and temporal resolution rainfall data are essential as precipitation is the driving force of soil erosion. In this study, we evaluated to what extent high temporal resolution data from the TAHMO network (with poor spatial and long-term coverage) can be combined with low temporal resolution data (with a high spatial density covering long periods of time) to improve rainfall erosivity assessments. To this end, 5-minute rainfall data from TAHMO stations in the Lake Kivu region, representing ca. 37 observation years, were analyzed. The analysis of the TAHMO data showed that rainfall erosivity was mainly controlled by rainfall amount and elevation and that this relation was different for the dry and wet seasons. By combining high and low-temporal resolution databases and a set of spatial covariates, an environmental regression approach (GAM) was used to assess the spatiotemporal patterns of rainfall erosivity for the whole region. A validation procedure showed relatively good predictions for most months (R2 between 0.50 and 0.80), while the model was less performant for the wettest (April) and two driest months (July and August) (R2 between 0.24 and 0.38). The predicted annual erosivity was highly variable with a range between 2000 and 9000 MJ mm ha−1 h−1 yr−1 and showed a pronounced east–west gradient which is strongly influenced by local topography. This study showed that the combination of high and low-temporal-resolution rainfall data and spatial prediction models can be used to improve the assessments of monthly and annual rainfall erosivity patterns that are grounded in locally calibrated and validated data.

Read more                                                                  Download Pdf

 

L’Observatoire Hydrométéorologique Trans-Africain (TAHMO) est une association à but non lucrative qui cherche à développer un réseau dense de stations météorologiques sur le continent africain. Cela se traduit sur le terrain par l’installation de stations météorologiques automatiques, robustes et efficaces. TAHMO opère actuellement dans les régions centrales, orientales, occidentales et australes de l’Afrique et compte actuellement plus de 500 stations installées reparties dans cinq (05) Zones.

Dans la zone 2, TAHMO opère dans sept (07) pays dont le Burkina, le Mali, le Niger, le Sénégal, la Centrafrique, le Tchad et le Cameroun. La Zone 2 compte à ce jour plus de 70 stations.

TAHMO a pour objectif de fournir un taux de fonctionnement de 95% sur l’ensemble de son réseau de stations météorologiques à tout moment afin d’assurer une disposition des données de qualités et continues. Afin d’atteindre ces objectifs TAHMO souhaite renforcer son équipe avec un technicien ou un ingénieur de terrain.

Le travail se fait principalement sur le terrain où les stations sont installées et implique donc des déplacements. La personne pressentie, une fois sélectionnée, Co-assurera l’entretien des quarante-trois (43) stations installées actuellement au Mali, ce nombre est appelé à évoluer rapidement sachant que l’objectif de TAHMO est l’installation d’environ vingt mille stations (20 000) stations météorologiques automatiques sur le continent.

La langue principale de fonctionnement de l’organisation à but non lucrative TAHMO est l’anglais, ainsi la compréhension et la pratique de l’anglais et du français sont indispensable.

Le technicien ou l’ingénieur de terrain représente TAHMO sur place, il coordonne les activités de  TAHMO sous la supervision du directeur régional de la Zone 2. Il devra :

  1. Assurer l’installation des stations météorologiques, leurs maintenances ainsi que la promotion des activités de TAHMO au Mali.
  2. Maintenir un taux de fonctionnement d’au moins 95% pour toutes les stations sous sa supervision ;
  3. Assurer la liaison avec le superviseur régional (basé à Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso), le directeur des opérations et le Directeur General de TAHMO
  4. Faire un rapport hebdomadaire au directeur régional sur les performances et l’installation des stations (évaluation QA/QC),
  5. Entretenir un journal des activités journalières, hebdomadaires et mensuelles réalisées et prévisionnelles;
  6. Tenir à jour les métadonnées de toutes les stations qui vous sont assignés, y compris les photos et les rapports de chaque visite de site en utilisant un journal de bord et/ou les outils QA/QC en ligne de TAHMO ;
  7. Veiller à ce que toutes les stations relevant de sa compétence soient visitées au moins une fois par an et plus si nécessaire pour entretenir, réparer ou remplacer les stations.
  8. Entretenir les outils nécessaires aux opérations sur le terrain et tout autre actif, le cas échéant ;
  9. Superviser efficacement et effectivement les hôtes locaux des stations ;
  10. Soutenir l’équipe TAHMO pour améliorer les programmes de contrôle et d’assurance de la qualité ;
  11. Assurer la liaison avec les autres membres de l’équipe, y compris le directeur régional, le directeur général et le directeur des opérations pour superviser et former les nouveaux stagiaires ;
  12. Aider la direction générale à établir, maintenir et renforcer des liens formels et informels efficaces avec les partenaires clés, notamment Mali-Météo, les ministères et organismes gouvernementaux concernés, les autorités locales, les principaux décideurs et les autres parties prenantes en général, afin d’échanger des informations et des points de vue et de s’assurer que TAHMO fournit la gamme et la qualité appropriées de services nécessaires ;
  13. Commercialiser activement les services et produits de TAHMO au Mali et dans d’autres pays qui pourraient vous être assignés ;
  14. Soutenir les activités du programme School2school au Mali;
  15. Soutenir TAHMO afin de se positionner stratégiquement pour recevoir suffisamment de fonds par le biais de projets, de services et de produits afin d’améliorer sa croissance au Mali;
  16. Veiller à ce que TAHMO respecte toutes les lois locales, y compris le paiement de toutes les taxes pertinentes ;
  17. Effectuer d’autres tâches à la demande du directeur régional ou de la Direction Générale.

Lignes hiérarchiques

Le Technicien ou l’ingénieur de terrain relève directement du directeur régional, du directeur des opérations et du Directeur Général.

Qualifications

  • Un Master ou niveau d’enseignement supérieur (minimum DEUG 2) en météorologie, physique, mathématique, génie civil, génie électrique/électronique, génie informatique, informatique, sciences de l’environnement et programmes connexes.
  • La capacité à écrire et à parler un excellent anglais.

 

Les candidatures, les lettres de motivation et les curriculum vitae (CV) doivent être envoyés par courrier électronique au plus tard le 19 Février 2021 à 23h59 à l’adresse suivante.

 

mandetheophile@gmail.com

Le directeur régional

TAHMO Zone 2

Ouagadougou-Burkina Faso
Tel : +226 70 16 94 23

www.tahmo.org

TAHMO country representative for Kenya Victor Omoit joined Faith Wawira – Senior ICT Officer (WRA)   and Joseph Mukola – Principal Meteorology Technician (KMD) on a five-day field work to carry out regular maintenance on 10 Automatic Weather Stations installed in the Nzoia basin.

The team started their work in the Eldoret sub-region then in the Kitale Sub-region and finally complete their activity in Kakamega.

The stations involved were at the following locations: Ndalat, Naiberi, Turbo NYS, Chebororwa ATC, Kapcherop, Mt Elgon Flowers, Koitobos, Ndalu, Malava, Nzoia Sugar Company and finally Butere Girls High School.

Early warning Systems could contribute up to 36:1 in terms of benefit-cost ratios in developing countries. However, they are often non-functional mostly due to a lack of weather and stream-flow data (WMO-No.1153). This is the challenge that TAHMO  is addressing with a dense network of ground observing stations that provide near real-time reliable data to improve Numerical Weather Predictions (NWP) and hydrological models for Africa through data assimilation (satellites and in-situ data). https://tahmo.org/climate-data/

Whatever solution is provided for an Early Warning System should be easily scalable, sustainable and impactful. It needs to be a complete end-to-end solution that involves data collection, processing and dissemination of “localized” information to end users and the use of the information in their activities in the form of warnings to build their resilience through disaster preparedness and flood risk reduction. This is the basis for which the Water Resources Authority (WRA) installed an Early Warning System consisting of 10 Automatic Weather Stations and 7 Automatic Water Level Stations in 2018/2019 and TAHMO is very happy to have been part of this project.

On March 15, Kenya was put on partial lockdown after 2 COVID cases were reported in the country.  Alongside the government-imposed dusk-to-dawn curfew, schools were closed and movement restricted. Within a week, the lockdown wave had spread to most East African countries. It created a sense of panic, fear and uncertainty. This hit our team hard because our work involves traveling, meetings and working with schools. I wondered how we would carry on with field activities.

At TAHMO East Africa, we have an elaborate guideline for field work that ensures we provide high-quality data. If a weather station is faulty for instance, our first point of contact is the host who checks if the issue is minor and where possible resolves the issue. But if the issue is more complicated, one of our technicians/meteorologists/engineers visits the site. Additionally, we have put up structures for preventing station failures. One way is by yearly preventive maintenance where we visit all the stations to identify any potential future problems and resolve them beforehand.

When lockdown came along, we were at the peak of our yearly stations maintenance. I also had scheduled travels, clients to meet, projects to initiate and projects to push forward. All this put me in a limbo. Top on my list of attention was how our team would carry along repairs. There are no two ways with weather stations. If it is not working, data not captured will never be recovered. But how then would we carry on with the activities with COVID challenges?

In Kenya, most stations are hosted in schools. When schools shut a big number of teachers relocated. We did not have effective communication with the hosts anymore. Traveling to the sites was a challenge too. You would be comforted with several fears – caught out of time due to delays in screenings mounted in roadblocks, or at worst, being put on government quarantine.

By mid-April, we had put up a structure where more people would help with field activities. In Kenya for instance Victor (TAHMO Engineer) involved former interns and volunteers living in areas where we could not travel to assist with some of the work. In Rwanda, Honore (TAHMO Engineer), trained new technicians via zoom that would take work in areas in regions he was unable to travel.

At the time of this writing (mid-July 2020) countries are easing restrictions. There is less fear – we have probably learned to carry on with our work amidst the challenges. TAHMO East Africa Network improved tremendously in the last two months. Not everything is working right, and we do not expect everything to be smooth soon. There is still a sense of uncertainty about how the future will look after COVID.  But we will keep the hope and develop more ways of keeping our work going.

Based in Chicago, Farm Immersive is a weekly blog by Peter Miller. His posts explore global food and agriculture innovations.

In a recent blog published on the 13th of April 2020, we got an honorary mention. In Peter Miller’s exact words TAHMO is a bold project to build weather stations across Africa and share that data free of charge. This will greatly enhance all crop insurance modeling across the continent”.

want to read more on this beautifully written piece? click here

With the global COVID-19 pandemic, activities have been highly slowed down. However, Victor in Kenya is trying to keep things moving. Being a field engineer, it is a bit complicated for him to work from home, but during this pandemic, he adjusts and finds ways to ensure that field activities do not stop completely especially for stations that need urgent maintenance - for the data, we lose today cannot be readily regained. Read more

COVID-19

Categories: Uncategorized
Comments: No

Due to the current COVID-19 situation, stations’ uptime might be affected. We are doing our best to maintain a very high uptime but remote stations could be affected due to restrictions on travel in these difficult times.

ENDEAVOR TO STAY SAFE
– Avoid public gatherings or crowds.
– Wash your hands with soap for at least 20 seconds when you come in from public areas or use an alcohol-based (more than 60%) sanitizer.
– If there are restrictions on movement in your locality, kindly heed them.
– Practice social distancing.