Originally posted on USAID - AgriLink

May 11, 2017

https://agrilinks.org/blog/how-weather-stations-became-radio-stations

For the first time, community members can own climate data and learn about weather patterns in the area where they live and grow their food.

How Weather Stations

Became Radio Stations

THE BEGINNING

Exactly two years had passed between that evening and its weather forecast, and my first visit to Mazvihwa. On my first visit, I had come as a volunteer consultant and a friend of the Muonde Trust to share my skills in eco-hydrology with local farmers working on water conservation projects.

The Muonde Trust is a community-based organization dedicated to the development of educational, agricultural, and community programs in a group of villages in south-central Zimbabwe. During that visit I had the honor of meeting Mr. Zephaniah Phiri, only several months before he died. Phiri was a community leader and one of the inspirations behind Muonde Trust’s focus on indigenous innovation, he himself a self-taught world-renowned master of water harvesting. There wasn’t much I could contribute to this person, who was able to turn a barren, semi-arid land into a flourishing farm with vast biodiverse crops, including fishponds, reliant merely on rainfall inputs in this dry regiond. But I did talk with the other farmers about ways they could decrease evaporation from their runoff-collecting pits, and I did bring the weather stations.

WEATHER STATIONS ON A SHOESTRING

When plans for this first visit were starting to come alive, I tried to think of ways in which I could contribute my knowledge and expertise to the community I was about to visit. As an environmental scientist, the first thing I would want to do is gain some basic knowledge on the climate and the soil of this region before I proceed with any further planning. Productive agriculture is based upon this fundamental information. In Mazvihwa, subsistence farmers live off the grid. Apart from no running water, what they have in terms of electricity and communications is what they have themselves developed around solar panels and cell phones. Transport and internet access are extremely limited - isolating them from the cities and from the world. Access to data is a farfetched luxury.

Like other areas in Africa rainfall data is sparse and typically only collected at a handful of centers across a vast and varied area. Rain gauges installed here in the 1980s by a research project operated for less than a decade. The Meteorological Office now operates with a business model rather than as an open access public service and has declined to re-establish these stations. Even to access data they themselves contributed the community would need to pay. Could they instead collect and manage their own data? Measuring equipment we use at our research sites are extremely expensive, difficult to maintain, and demand high technical skills to operate. I needed inexpensive solutions that were also simple. I printed charts that teach how to perform on-site manual tests for soil texture without the need for materials or equipment. I found simple soil moisture sensors that cost less than $10. I bought soil analysis kits (NPK) for less than $20. I was especially happy to learn about weather stations that cost only slightly more than $100, packing in technologies that a few years ago were prohibitively expensive. The soil analysis kits and soil moisture sensors were donated to the local high-school agriculture teacher, an inspiring young man with high ambitions, who could utilize them best and deliver the knowledge to the community. The weather stations were installed in the villages.

These 5-in-1 weather stations measure air temperature, barometric pressure, relative humidity, wind direction, wind speed, and rainfall. Designed to measure environmental data from your backyard, they are easy to install and maintain, and battery-operated. While originally aimed for meteorology-enthusiastic home users, I thought this could be a great solution for the rural farmers. On-site weather data is essential for agriculture, and provides information needed to decide on seeding and harvesting dates. In the future, after sufficient weather data would accumulate, seasonal trends can be investigated, and the effects of climate change can be assessed. This information can be used to choose the most appropriate crop types and varieties that would be adaptable to climate change in the region.

THE ACTION PLAN

We installed weather stations in three different homesteads. Locations were less than 7 km apart, but due to topographical changes, we expected the weather to slightly vary between locations. The stations are supposed to be mounted on metal or PVC poles with screws. Lacking such industrial equipment, the farmers constructed poles from local materials – branches and wires that could be found on the ground, within minutes.

As I was walking behind Abraham Mawere, the Village Head and one of the Muonde Trust founders, trying to keep up with his long, steady steps, I glimpsed at the sky. It was dusk, but I could still see that the sky was covered with heavy, gray clouds. “Abraham, is it going to rain tomorrow?” I asked, for I was deeply concerned. It was mid-March of 2017, and we’d just arrived at Abraham’s village after two full days of travel from our homes in California to the rural villages of Mazvihwa District, near the city of Zvishavane in south-central Zimbabwe. Plans for the day ahead of us were made weeks in advance, and I couldn’t let bad weather disrupt our full schedule. “No, no rains for tomorrow” said Abraham, without even raising his eyes from the ground. “How can you tell?” I ask, hoping to learn an indigenous weather forecasting skill from this wise man. “The weather station told me”, he replies. “And you trust the weather station?” I ask. “It’s 100% accurate”, says Abraham.

It was quite an experience to observe the innovations people came up with to replace things we can easily find in any hardware store.

One of the most remarkable experiences from this visit was the installation of one of the weather stations in the Madzoke Valley. In this remote location lies a group of villages that are not approachable by car. From the road, we hiked several kilometers, carrying the boxed weather station, until we reached the striking pastoral scenery of the valley. Here, true coexistence between man and nature can be observed, where the small agricultural fields gently blend into the topography and surrounding tree stands. As we reached the village, we could see a line of people dressed in white walking across it, suddenly changing their direction and returning toward us. It was Sunday, and they were walking to church, but when they saw we are coming with the weather station, they returned. After installing the weather station we talked about the weather data and how it can improve their agricultural practices. And then, the church ceremony was conducted, with prayers, songs, and dances, under the tree, near the weather station.

A designated operator was assigned for each of the three stations, responsible for keeping and maintaining the weather station. The stations came with an indoor display unit that can both display and temporarily store data. A fourth Muonde member was responsible for downloading data from the display units, which can keep data for up to 10 days. This is not an easy task – only one laptop was available, powered by intermittent solar power. We decided that it was safer to travel with the display units to the computer rather than vice verse. Each week, each operator was to walk up to 40 km round trip to bring the display unit to the homestead where the laptop is located. If there were no power problems, the data could be downloaded. Because we were concerned that technical issues would jeopardize the data collection, the operators were instructed to log weather data each day at a fixed hour into a notebook, in addition to file downloads. After these instructions were clear, and the procedures were practiced, we left Zimbabwe.

WEATHER STATIONS GET FAMOUS

Upon my return two years later to work on a different project (bringing water pumps to the women’s community gardens), I was curious to see what happened with the weather stations. I was amazed to learn that not only were all three still carefully maintained and operational (alas a slight discoloration due to the exposure to the harsh sun), data was routinely logged in notebooks and usually downloaded to the computer.

Lacking local weather data, information from these stations quickly became valuable to the surrounding communities. Farmers and neighbors would call after large rain events to ask for numbers – how large was this event? Agricultural extension officers would call Muonde and ask – how much rainfall has accumulated from the start of the season? After it had reached 50 mm, the agricultural extension officers spread the word to the farmers and instructed them to start planting. One story touches on how this kind of innovation can inspire others. Last year, a workshop was held in an agricultural demo plot at a nearby district. Representatives from various aid organizations and NGO’s arrived. One of the attendees apparently said: “How can you run an agricultural demo plot without a weather station? How can you instruct farmers when and what to plant if you don’t have weather data? How is it that only the Muonde Trust has weather stations in this region?” They were all curious about these stations, and at the end of the workshop they traveled to see it with their own eyes

There was another surprise. After ‘learning’ the local weather data, based on the gathered local weather information, the display units have the capability to produce local weather forecast for the following day. This local forecast was found to be tremendously valuable. In September 2016, the display unit warned of extreme heat conditions. Mazvihwa experienced a heat wave, and temperature of up to 46°C was recorded. In the days when such warning forecasts were received, Muonde members would travel between villages and advise people to be prepared – fetch water in the evening and not leave it to the warm hours, take care of animals, and keep babies and elders inside. In January 2017 strong storms led to floods in the region. When the forecast on the weather stations’ display units indicated heavy rains for tomorrow, Muonde members would again travel between villages, warning families not to send children to school if they needed to cross streams that were susceptible to flooding.

And this is how the weather stations became radio stations.

During my second visit, I’d spent many hours with three Muonde members on that old, slow laptop, with power that goes on and off. Together we were able to master complicated tasks such as converting and amending files, performing data quality assurance, cleaning the database, organizing data, filling gaps using the data they’ve recorded manually in notebooks, calculating means, deviations, and maximums, plotting the data, and comparing years and locations. Just as with any other learning process, the beginning was slow, but the speed and complexity of work increased exponentially. At the end of the week, I could easily say that these learners had acquired advanced data analysis capabilities. They can now prepare weather data that can be used for the benefit of the community, and the farmers.

Photo Credit - Emmanuel Hove

DATA ANALYSIS RESEARCH

Within this two-year period, weather data has accumulated. It was time to look at seasonal and annual trends, and spatial variability between stations. The display units record a line of data each 12 minutes, which mounts into a large database. Preparing such a database for presentation and analysis requires professional treatment. And this is a great opportunity for teaching such skills to people that are so hungry to learn.

EMPOWERMENT THORUGH DATA ACCESS

For subsidence farmers in many developing regions of the world, the adverse effects of climate change are a worrisome threat. One of the reasons for the unsettlement is the lack of information about the characteristics, scale, and rate of this phenomenon. Although climate predictions are available, these are often coarse in scale (therefore not very useful locally), difficult to understand for non-scientists, and inaccessible for communities such as those living in rural Zimbabwe.

Bringing weather stations to the Mazvihwa villages has shown that with inexpensive and simple equipment, farmers and community members can increase their knowledge about local weather patterns. Like African rural societies, the people of Mazvihwa have accumulated extraordinary traditional knowledge about rainfall patterns and farming and ecological processes. Research in the 1980s, for example, by the people still involved in Muonde, found that old people in Mazvihwa could predict both by what date a failure for the rains to start would result in decreased total rainfall and that even such decreases were limited and subject to high variability. But today both the people and local weather patterns have changed. To compensate for their declining traditional knowledge and its usefulness, they have started to utilize and integrate contemporary weather data to make knowledge-based decisions on agricultural practices, increasing food security. Community members have changed daily practices based on weather forecasts, increasing personal security. With accumulated weather data, the conversation about future climate change can become more realistic and relevant, because people can now better understand and evaluate predictions for temperature and precipitation changes.

But more than anything, to me, this is a lesson on how having access to data has the capacity to empower a whole community. The people of Mazvihwa showed how possessing knowledge made them more united as a community and allowed them to take more actions toward improving their wellbeing.