(Tetum) Seeds of Life (SoL) continues to work with the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (MAF) agro-meteorology department, ALGIS, to improve weather data.  SoL also working in partnership with GIZ (from Germany), Camoes (from Portugal) and FAO Timor-Leste in order to improve this work.

Staff from DNMG, National Archives, ALGIS, GIZ, Camoes and SoL working together at Loes

As part of this collaboration, a new national plan for agro-meteorology was developed that involved combining a number of weather stations into ALGIS responsibility so that under the new plan they will manage 43 weather stations across the nation.

“Fifteen of these stations will be a primary network to measure rain, temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, wind direction, solar radiation, soil moisture, soil surface temperature and soil sub-surface temperature,” says Samuel Bacon, MAF-SoL Crops System Advisor.

“A further 28 stations will be part of a secondary network measuring rain, temperature, relative humidity, wind speed and solar radiation.”

Carefully measuring down and inserting the soil moisture meter

Cosme and Tiago at upgrading the weather station at the Agriculture Research Station

During August, SoL has already upgraded five of its stations to the primary network, two more stations will also be upgraded and another 15 now operate as part of the secondary network.

“The weather stations is managed by MAF staff who have the skills to do full installation, maintenance, download and processing of data.  This data is then used in crop modelling research to investigate possibilities of new crop varieties that are suitable to the variable climate of Timor-Leste.”

SoL also shares the data with a number of government and non-government organisations to assist in their planning.  SoL continues to work towards improving public access to weather data to support the development of Timor-Leste.

See various resources of weather data here.