Look after weather stations, expert says

 WEATHER stations in the country must be looked after properly because expensive instruments and equipment installed there provide vital information, a weather expert said.

Robert Thompson, of the National Weather Service, said: “Weather is changing and now the data from these automated weather stations is very important as it directly or indirectly helps development planning like road infrastructure, agricultural research and development, surveillance and monitoring of epidemic diseases.

“Custodians of some of the equipments across the country provide important information to the country.

“The Coffee Industry Corporation is also a custodian to two weather stations – one in Aiyura, Eastern Highlands, and the other at the Western Highlands substation.

“CIC is a very important consumer to the type of data collected as current changes in coffee seasonality is now shifting away from the normal  siksmun which is normally the peak coffee season. 

“With this information, coffee farmers including scientists can predict the yield and plan for it the following year.”

Thompson visited CIC and the National Agricultural Research Institute (Aiyura) on May 27-29.

He trained the Research and Growers Service Division at CIC on how to download and analyse data from the automated weather stations.