Earth Networks to Continue Protecting Mozambique from Severe Weather
- Apr 19, 2018
Earlier this week, we announced our new public-private partnership with Mozambique National Meteorology (INAM) for enhanced weather information services and sustainability.
On 16 April, we co-hosted a presentation with INAM and the U.S. Commercial Service in Mozambique to highlight this program and the work we’ve been doing in the area since 2014. Attendees included government officials from both Mozambique and the U.S. Click through the gallery below to see photos from the engaging evening in Delagoa.
The History of Earth Networks in Mozambique
In 2014, we embarked on a pilot project to build an Earth Networks Weather Network in Mozambique. This project is intended to help safety and disaster recovery agencies provide the public with advanced warning of incoming severe weather. This alerting helps save lives, reduce injuries, and minimize property damage throughout the country. We deployed 11 stations in Mozambique, located on various MCELL towers. Our sensors collected real-time weather data and delivered that through the Internet to INAM forecasters for both training and use.
These weather stations provide critical real-time data on over 30 weather conditions, including:
- Wind speed/direction
- Rain/hour rate
- Temperature
- Solar radiation
Throughout this pilot program, we’ve had the distinct honor of hosting the USTDA Group Training at our headquarters in Maryland. Together, we’ve focused on management sensitization, network field engineering training, and end-user/forecaster training. That way, Mozambique is better prepared to handle dangerous thunderstorms, long rainy seasons, and tropical cyclones.
If you want to protect your region from severe weather with a total lightning network, please contact us today to see how you can get started.
Severe Weather in Mozambique
Severe weather has always been a large problem in Mozambique. With its tropical climate, Mozambique is subject to a long rainy season from November to April. In 2017 alone, our total lightning network detected more than 9.6 million in-cloud and cloud-to-ground lightning strikes. At the presentation on the 16th, we highlighted some of the storms we tracked over the past few years.
The first storm is from 27 February 2016. In the image below, the purple lightning strikes indicate in-cloud discharges while the yellow lightning strikes indicate cloud-to-ground ones. As you can see, we detected a lot of lightning. This storm contained approximately 168,000 total lightning strikes during the event.
When a storm generates a high frequency of lightning like this in a short amount of time our systems automatically generate a Dangerous Thunderstorm Alert (DTA). DTAs offer the greatest lead times for decision-makers when severe weather is on its way. We issued 49 DTAs in the region during the storms on 27 February 2016.
Another piece of advanced technology we use to forecast severe weather in Mozambique is PulseRad. PulseRad is our state-of-the-art radar alternative that uses total lightning to help provide radar data to areas that typically cannot access it. This is just another tool INAM can access to protect civilians as well as businesses in the region like agriculture and mining facilities.
Learn more about this deadly day of storms.
What’s Next
We’re very excited about the next steps in Mozambique to turn our pilot program into a permanent solution. Over the next few months, we’ll retool the 11 pilot stations for permanent operation in the national network. The next step is to add another 14 stations to complete Mozambique’s national network. “This truly is the realization of a multi-stakeholder, multi-user weather information platform for the country that is designed to sustain itself on a long-term basis,” said Ari Davidov, Director of International Business Development at Earth Networks.
