Earth Networks aims to improve forecasting and alerting services in Mozambique

Earth Networks, which operates weather and climate sensor networks worldwide, has entered into a partnership with Instituto Nacional de Meteorologia de Mozambique (INAM), Africa, to scale up live storm monitoring, lightning detection and real-time weather observations. Initiated as a pilot project in 2014, the Earth Networks Weather Network in Mozambique is intended to help safety and disaster recovery agencies provide the public with advance warning of incoming severe weather to save lives, reduce injuries and minimise property damage. In addition to lightning detection, the network includes automated weather stations and real-time observations for hourly point forecasts across Mozambique. With its tropical climate, Mozambique is subject to a long rainy season from November to April and has already suffered life and property losses this year due to dangerous storms and damaging floods. In 2017 the network detected more than 9.6 million in-cloud and cloud-to-ground lightning strikes in the country. Earth Networks has a well-established presence in more than 25 sub-Saharan African countries through a variety of pilot and donor-funded programmes and private-sector partnerships. These initiatives help national meteorological and hydrological services (NMHS) increase capacity in a sustainable manner while providing improved safety and operational efficiency for companies, organisations and communities. The INAM – Earth Networks partnership helps residents and visitors gain access to more detailed weather information such as localised forecasts and real-time severe weather alerts. At the Earth Networks Weather Network launch presentation, Ari Davidov, director of international business development at Earth Networks, said, “We are excited to be in Maputo [Mozambique’s capital] today with INAM to showcase these new capabilities to safety agencies and demonstrate opportunities to use new weather data sets and software services to optimise operations within a wide variety of industries including agriculture, mining and utilities. This truly is the realisation of a multi-stakeholder, multi-user weather information platform for the country that is designed to sustain itself on a long-term basis.” Dr Aderito Celso Felix Aramuge, general director of INAM, said, “Alerting the public to incoming severe weather has always been a challenge due to the size of the country and Mozambique’s volatile climate. Working with Earth Networks to implement this life-saving early warning system will enable us to issue warnings for dangerous thunderstorms, strong winds and storm surges with extended lead times and detailed location-based alerts.”