While conducting research in Africa,
Professor John Selker of Oregon State University and Professor Nick Van der Giesen of Delft University of Technology became frustrated by a lack of easily accessible weather and climate data local to them. They decided that something needed to be done.
From this seed in 2014, the Trans-African Hydro-Meteorological Observatory (TAHMO) grew. Ten years later, TAHMO’s members commemorated all that the organization had accomplished. They invited METER to join them at their headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya to celebrate and look at what the project’s future could hold.
THE MISSION OF TAHMO
TAHMO was built with the dream of installing a network of 20,000 weather stations across sub-Saharan Africa — one station every 30 km (19 mi) — to fill the large atmospheric data gaps that researchers were experiencing. With little to no government funding available, TAHMO’s founders quickly realized they were going to have to get creative to obtain the funding and community buy-in required to accomplish this unprecedented mission. Their creative problem-solving blossomed into a network of services that support and advance communities across Africa in a sustainable way.
STARTING A WEATHER NETWORK
Attempting to cover a vast continent stretching over 24 million km3 (9 million mi 3) is no easy feat. The TAHMO founders had trouble getting people to understand the concept of TAHMO. With no cost to the national governments, many potentially collaborators were suspicious about their motives since their offer — a privately funded hydro-meteorological network with open-sourced data — seemed too good to be true. Patience became the key as the founders of TAHMO discovered that collaboration takes time. Some agencies took up to 5 years to come to sensor placement agreements.
The next step was to start building innovative business models to allow TAHMO to self-fund the stations. They looked around for those who could benefit from the weather data they planned to collect and started reaching out. Since TAHMO was started to fill data gap for researchers, it made the most sense to first identify clients who could use the raw data. Researchers across the world were excited about a new expanding source of research-grade, open-source data.
But TAHMO knew that helping researchers was only the first step. Everyone is affected by weather, and so many can benefit from research-grade local weather measurement but do not have the expertise or time to sift through raw data. That’s why TAHMO’s next step was to find industries across Africa in need of actionable weather information.
LEARNING FROM WEATHER DATA
In 10 years of operation, TAHMO developed several services to help the communities of Africa and fund the expansion and maintenance of their network. One of the larger concerns for the network was how to keep the weather stations safe from vandalism and theft. In Africa, religious centers and schools are considered safe havens for citizens escaping natural disasters such as flooding. For that reason, placing weather stations turned out to be an ideal arrangement.
It would be easy to stop there, but TAHMO decided to expand its presence at schools one step further. They worked with the schools to integrate lessons directly into the syllabus for every class that utilized the weather data collected by the weather stations. Students gain more than meteorological lessons. The data collected is used to give them a practical application to the math they are learning with tasks such as average rainfall or windspeed over a specific period.
10 YEARS OF SOLVING COMMUNITY PROBLEMS
With the success of the TAHMO project in schools, they decided to look deeper into their communities to see where this data could make the most long-lasting and sustainable impact. They developed programs that improve flood prediction in communities that have a history of being devastated by seasonal flooding. Another project placed weather stations along rivers to help with dam management for hydropower and flood management.
TAHMO also works with the mining sector to implement environmental monitoring. This data helps them plan when to conduct mining activities and provides warning of potential imminent disasters, giving them time to prepare.
GROWING AGRICULTURE
The continent of Africa contains 60% of the unused farmable land worldwide. Unfortunately, agricultural productivity is 1/6th of the productivity of most other agricultural regions in the world. As Dr. John Selker states in this video, the reason for this discrepancy is lack of access to information on how to use contemporary technology to improve yields.
Many factors come into play when farmers are looking to improve yields. A goal of more production within the same footprint requires local farmers to make more informed decisions for pest management, irrigation, and fertilization schedules.
Learn more
Even with diligent planning and care throughout the growing process, African farmers still risk losing it all to flash floods. The financial impact of devastating flooding is mitigated in other parts of the world with crop insurance, which requires proof of the meteorological event that caused the loss. Communities that rely on virtual weather for these claims often have their claims denied since localized weather events aren’t always captured on the global model scale that virtual weather uses. The atmospheric data provided by the TAHMO project makes it possible for farmers to use their crop insurance when disaster strikes, knowing they will have the high-quality reliable data needed to make insurance claims.
TAHMO + METER
TAHMO needed to choose weather stations for this ambitious project. Accuracy was key. Scientific research demands research-grade measurement. The stations needed to be incredibly durable to stand up to the dust, bugs, extreme heat, and other elements the African climate would throw at them. The instrument needed to be compact and easily transportable, so they could be backpacked into remote areas. The equipment needed to operate without bulky telemetry or large solar panels, which might tempt thieves. The devices needed to be easy to install and maintain by non-specialists. Lastly, they needed easy, remote access to every data set, preferably with the API flexibility to work with their own software.
They opted for rugged, wireless all-in-one weather stations and cloud-connected data loggers with simple plug-and-play operation.
In the end, the ATMOS 41 and ATMOS 41W were the weather stations that stood up to the challenge. Since 2017, METER has been a dedicated partner in TAHMO’s mission. In the summer of 2024, METER was invited to visit their headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya to join in the celebration of all this groundbreaking organization has accomplished and to partake in the excitement of all that is still to come.
"It was METER that really bought into our vision and our mission and then provided us all the support that we needed to have such [weather] stations."
Frank Ohene Annor, TAHMO CEO
THE FUTURE OF TAHMO
TAHMO is still working towards their goal of 20,000 weather stations. Limited resources and active conflicts in the region have slowed progress, but they continue to press forward, looking for every opportunity to fill the weather data void in Africa. As of their 10-year anniversary, TAHMO has installed over 700 weather stations across much of the continent.
They have also found the value of measuring soil moisture content for their agricultural, flood monitoring, and mining clients. They have started co-locating several TEROS 12 soil moisture sensors and are hoping to expand their usage to more sites. By measuring the water content, temperature, and electrical conductivity of the soil, the TAHMO team hopes to help farmers understand both the water and salt balances within the soil to make the most informed irrigation and fertilization scheduling decisions.
Learn more about soil water and salt balances –>
By working with local communities and schools, TAHMO hopes to create a more sustainable and data-driven future for Africa. They are building a new culture of innovation, technological advancement, and sustainability that they hope to pass on to the generations to come.
METER congratulates our friends at TAHMO for their groundbreaking work so far,
and we are excited to join them in their journey towards growing public awareness and access to thorough and accurate hydro-meteorological data.
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