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In another remarkable success, in early February 2015, TAHMO was selected as one of 16, from over 500 applicants, for the Rockefeller Foundation/USAID “Global Resilience Challenge”. This project will be carried forward as a team, with partners including Earthnetworks (USA), African Centres for Lightning and Electromagnetics (ACLE, Uganda), Uganda Chartered Healthnet, and Human Network International (USA).

The project will start by defining the current situation with extreme weather losses (including over 3,000 deaths from lightning per year in the area surrounding Lake Victoria alone), moving then to laying out a practical and sustainable solution. TAHMO’s proposal includes an Early Warning System (EWS) development and validation project in Uganda. This EWS will detect and alert heavy weather events so agricultural production can be improved and industry and services are protected. The grant is provided in a series of stages, which if successful will yield over US$1,2M to the effort. During stage 2 of the Global Resilience Partnership, teams will propose solutions and implementation plans. The final winners of the second stage will receive a grant to implement and scale up their solutions in each region. This will be announced in September this year.

The Global Forum for Innovations in Agriculture has invited TAHMO to host a Forum on advances in climate observations for enhanced food security in Africa.  The event took place on March 10th in Abu Dhabi and included panelists John Selker and Nick van de Giesen (co-Directors of TAHMO), as well as speakers from Kenya and Switzerland.  This put TAHMO in the spotlight for its leadership in continent-scale observations in Africa.  The speakers addressed not only the importance to farmers, but also the commercial viability of these observations, illustrating the unique financial model employed by TAHMO to sustainably make timely and accurate climate observations available to scientists, governments, and farmers across the continent.

The first generation of TAHMO stations has now been in the field for 2 years in Senegal, Ghana, Kenya, Uganda, and South Africa.  During this entire time, we have been working closely with the people in the field as well as the station manufacturer to develop the next level of station performance.  The second generation of stations is expected to go to the field in January 2015!  A business-card-sized solar pane will have enough power to report every hour, around the clock, with a backup battery power sufficient for 3 months, just in case.  The station will have an internal barometer, a sonic anemometer that can measure low winds also far below the WMO standard, and a rain gauge that has no moving parts and 0.014 mm resolution that are over 10 times better than the WMO guidelines request, and the sonic wind speed sensor resolves down to 0.01 m/s.  In June the design will be consolidated into a single compact cylinder.

Following the official kick-off in Stockholm Sweden, the Securing Water For Food (SWFF) project is taking off.  The final contract was signed on November 21, 2014, and Zachary Dunn (TAHMO’s East Africa Field Director) will be starting his three-year SWFF-funded effort in Kenya starting January 1, 2015.   In the first year, the SWFF funding allows for the purchase of up to 25 stations, moving to 65 stations per year in the second and third years.  The project includes Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi.  We are seeking customers for the East African data, and are currently in discussions with several significant potential clients.

The UNDP, under funding from the Global Environmental Facility (GEF), has launched a project entitled “Climate Information for Resilient Development and Adaptation to Climate Change in Africa” (CIRDA).  TAHMO has been invited to both of the kick-off workshops of CIRDA (Ethiopia in April, and Tanzania in October), and now has been invited to put pilot stations in each of the 11 CIRDA countries ( Benin, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, the Gambia, Liberia, Malawi, Sao Tome and Principe, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia).  TAHMO will place up to 5 stations per country in schools as part of the School-2-School program.

Over the coming three years, CIRDA will provide each country with funds sufficient to install hundreds of stations.  At this point, the countries are evaluating a wide range of technological options, with TAHMO stations in the mix.  With the expected roll-out of the second generation of TAHMO stations in January and the introduction of the final one-piece stations in June, we hope to be selected in at least some of these countries.  TAHMO has been invited to carry out a half-day training on the installation, maintenance, and use of TAHMO stations and data systems in Uganda in March 2015.  This will be especially important for the installations to take place in Sierra Leone and Benin, where travel is currently complicated due to ebola.

Since September 2014, TAHMO, Earth Networks (EN), and African Centers for Lightning and Electromagnetics (ACLE) have been installing modern automatic weather stations around the Lake Victoria basin. The stations are for carrying out a pilot project on severe weather nowcasting based on total lightning detection with the aim of reducing deaths, injuries, and property damage caused by lightning.

In this project, 12 stations will be used to simultaneously detect lightning strikes. In real-time, the data shall be uploaded to an online server, analyzed, and information dispatched to end users. Highly detailed lightning data for storm cell identification and tracking will be provided. Once complete, the system will be able to combine nowcasting and forecasting capabilities and information disseminated to end-users through mobile telephones.

In addition to lightning data, each station provides real-time local weather information and predictions which includes rainfall, wind, temperature, humidity, and dew point.

Data from the project will not only be used to reduce damages, but also provide a detailed understanding of severe weather dynamics around the Lake Victoria region. The analytical information from lightning detection shall be integrated with other datasets for dissemination to end-users via web portals and mobile applications

AS3935 on Lightning network

Soon, it shall be possible to develop real-time lightning location detection systems at a low cost. This is according to research supported by TAHMO that proposes the use of integrated lightweight and low power-consuming gadgets to design lightning networks. The findings were presented at Jomo Kenyatta University (JKUAT) scientific technology and Industrialization conference in November 2014.

One of the biggest advantages of automatic weather stations equipped with cellular modems is the low maintenance required to keep them running. Making regular visits to TAHMO stations in remote areas represents a significant cost to the project, so any efforts to increase the stations’ autonomy save both time and money.

TAHMO weather stations use very little power – 5 AA-size batteries typically provide enough power for 6 to 9 months of operation – but batteries must eventually be replaced by a member of the trained field staff. As you might imagine, solar power is a terrific option throughout many parts of sunny Sub-Saharan Africa, and many scientific-grade weather stations use medium-sized solar panels and NiCad batteries to provide their power, but solar panel theft can be a problem in areas not connected to the power grid.

This year, Jon Viducich built low-profile solar chargers for TAHMO stations currently deployed in several East and West African countries. The chargers are based on a very small, high-efficiency panel measuring just 42 mm x 35 mm (1.65 in x 1.38 in), and include electrical components which prevent overcharging and limit power losses during the night. Each charger uses either one or two panels, depending on the number of times per day the station will report its data, and the electrical components are encapsulated in a transparent silicone material and protected by a UV-resistant polycarbonate box. The final product is quite small, reducing its visibility, and installation takes just a few minutes.

TAHMO has worked closely with Decagon on the design of a new weather station prototype, set to debut in 2015, which will include an integrated, low-profile solar panel. In the meantime, though, these small solar panels provide the power we need to keep the stations running, even in the harshest of environments.

TAHMO Team members doing some observation tests on the proposed site

TAHMO OAU is a subgroup of the TAHMO Nigeria group which met earlier this year in August at FUTA, Akure. The Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Nigeria’s most prestigious campus sits on a vast 11,861 hectares of land, most of which remains untapped and undeveloped. Armed with a very positive experience from the August workshop, the TAHMO OAU subgroup has sought to make its impact on the OAU campus which they believe is extremely important in achieving the TAHMO dream of 20,000 weather stations across sub-Saharan Africa.

This was first done with a presentation at the innovation dinner held at Kriscourt Hotel as part of the events marking TEDXIFE 2014. The presentation was well received and required steps are being taken to solidify the openings that emerged.

Currently, a super low-cost but efficient weather station is being set up and will be replicated based on the TAHMO pattern per sq. km throughout the campus area. The group has also developed a relationship with the OAU-met atmospheric group (headed by Prof. O.O. Jegede of Atmospheric Physics). He has gladly offered the group support such as testing and calibrating sensors with the standardized ones of the OAU-Met weather & research station (http://meteorology.oauife.edu.ng/).

The group seeks to use innovative ways to solve the most challenging of weather data problems and is currently partnering with the Life and Fitness cycling club for bicycle access in order to ease access to various locations, ZIWAS (Which is into Waste Management and Maximization), etc.