Gov’t Begins Digitisation Of Meteorological Agency For Accurate Weather Report

The Government of Ghana under the auspice of the Ghana Meteorological Agency (GMA) (GMA) has kick-started a process that will see the digitisation of the country’s meteorological system for accurate weather forecast.

Receiving financial backing from the World Bank, the agency is saddled up to revamp all of its old and manual systems which in time past had failed in giving accurate and perfect forecasting

According to the Deputy Director General in charge of Support Services at the Agency, Mr. Eric Essuman, a whopping $500,000 from the World Bank has been invested into the GMA for the setting up of Automatic Weather Stations (AWS).

“$350,000 had already been used to procure the equipment. We are left with $150,000 to work on our maintenance and communication of data for further forecast to the public,” he told Accra based GH One TV.

The AWS would be an improvement of the sub-region’s 150 operational Synoptic Weather Stations.

The investment will also see to it that the equipment is properly serviced for a period of two years.

Global Network of Environment and Technology (GNET) is said to be the brain behind the new automated system.

“With the coming of the system, the supplier was able to train our engineers to take over when they are not there. Technicians and staff of the have also been trained to operate the system,” Mr. Essuman said.

The new system

According to the GMA official, the old system was completely manual and not efficient

He explained that there were times when, data was miss communicated.

“When you gather the data, you have to call via phone so somebody may say ‘Four’ but you may hear it as ‘Five’ or ‘Six’ and then its recorded. But now, at the comfort of their office, they can transfer the data directly to the system.”

The system, according to him has an inbuilt quality management apparatus which checks misappropriations adding that “if you are supposed to transmit a temperature of 24 and you put in 74, the system will automatically flag it and you cannot transmit that data.”

The digitisation project which is expected to be ready before the start of the raining season will also be extended to various airports in the country, to aid the aviation sector.

“This season will be an accurate and perfect forecasting season,” Mr. Essuman added.