By Abdallah el-Kurebe, Editor
The Vice-Chancellor of the Federal University of Technology, Akure (FUTA), Professor Joseph Fuwape has commissioned a newly installed 4th Generation ATMOS 41 Automatic Weather Station (AWS) at the WASCAL Centre, FUTA.
This is contained in a statement by Adegbenro Adebanjo made available to Newsdiaryonline said the development is to keep pace with advancement in sensor design and technology on weather related issues.
“This is an upgrade of the 1st Generation Trans-African Hydro-Meteorological Observatory (TAHMO) Automatic Weather Station (AWS) which was installed at the WASCAL Meteorological Observatory at the Federal University of Technology, Akure in 2014 as the first TAHMO Station in Nigeria.
The 2014 AWS installation was a fall out of the success of the University in the finals of the Delft University of Technology (TU-Delft) TAHMO Sensor Design competition held in Nairobi, Kenya in 2013 as the University’s entries were selected among the winning entries,” Adebanjo stated.
Briefing the Vice-Chancellor about the operation of the Weather Station, the Head, Department of Meteorology and Climate Science (MCS), Professor Ahmed Balogun said, “It measures rainfall, thunder, does climate risk management and operates with a modem with which data can be downloaded remotely”.
He said its output will be useful for farmers and those whose activities are impacted by the weather.
According to Professor Balogun, “the Trans-African Hydro-Meteorological Observatory (TAHMO) goal is to develop a dense network of hydro meteorological stations in Sub-Sahara Africa, one-every 30 kilometers. This entails the installation of 20,000 stations”.
He said that “to ensure sustainability, various models have been developed around the data generated from the Automated Weather Station (AWS) in collaboration with various SME’s, academic institutions and sectors in the countries where the stations have been installed”.
He added that FUTA is a collaborator on the TAHMO project as Research and Training partner through an existing FUTA/TU-Delft Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).
Performing the commissioning, the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Joseph Fuwape said “this is a novel idea that will give FUTA further global recognition. With this development our presence in international domain is being reechoed. The Management is very proud about the Research output of the Department of Meteorology and Climate Science”.
