Implementation of Data Rescue Activities in Congo Assessment Report

Transcription

1 Implementation of Data Rescue Activities in Congo Assessment Report Brazzaville, Congo August 2017 H. Kontongomde, WMO consultant

2 I. Background From 14 to 21 August 2017, Mr Hama Kontongomde, WMO consultant, on request of the PR of Congo with WMO, Mr Alphonse Kanga, conducted a data rescue assessment mission to Brazzaville, Congo to: - Initiate the reorganization of the climatological paper archives - Set up a system using digital cameras to image, store and make accessible electronic copies of the paper records - discuss future CDMS to be installed in Congo. Mr Kontongomde paid a courtesy visit to the Director General of the Agence Nationale de l Aviation Civile (ANAC) Mr. Serge Florent Dzota to explain the importance of data rescue. The Meteorological Service of Congo purchased archive boxes and a PC for the imaging. A spare digital Sony A5000 camera was offered by the Agence Nationale de la Meteorologie (ANAM) of Burkina. Four people have been selected to be hired by WMO on a part-time basis for three months (September to November 2017): two retired meteorologists for the reorganization of the archives and two young former students for the imaging. The two teams will be supervised by Ms. Gervaise Issengué and Mr. Jardy Kanga. The PR has designated three of his staff to be also trained in imaging (see photo Annex 1). II. Re-organization of the paper archives There are 12 old wooden shelves and 2 metallic shelves that can still be used to store the archive boxes. Each wooden shelve can store 112 archive boxes corresponding to 112 years. The Direction de la Meteorologie of Congo has purchased 250 archive boxes. One archive box can accommodate one year of paper records (12 observation books and 12 Monthly Climatological Tables). More than 1000 archive boxes need to be purchased just for the synoptic stations. The 12 wooden shelves can store 1344 years of records. Wooden shelves Metallic shelves

3 A view of a sample of the archive boxes purchased by ANAC II.1 Synoptic stations STATION NAME BEGIN DATE NUMBER OF YEARS 1 POINTE NOIRE DOLISIE MOUYONDZI SIBITI BZV-MAYA MAYA M'PUOYA DJAMBALA GAMBONA MAKOUA OUESSO IMPFONDO SOUANKE MAKABANA KELLE EWO NKAYI TOTAL 964

4 II.2 Time table for the reorganization of the paper records for the period of 18 September to 15 December Period Estimated years of records to be reorganized and archived September October November III. Imaging In 2003 the WMO data rescue project has equipped some countries, including Congo, with 2 PCs and 2 copy stands. During this project, images of Monthly Climatological Tables (MCTs) of two stations (Brazzaville Maya-Maya Airtport and Impfondo) were created : - Impfondo Brazzaville Maya-Maya From the previous equipment, one copy stand could be used with one lamp out of two working. The fixing hook of the lamp was broken and had to be fixed provisionally to the stand. Four staff have been trained for the imaging applying the remote camera control and file renaming software.

5 III.1 Time table for the imaging for the period of 18 September to 15 December Period Estimated years of records to be imaged September October November IV. Climate Database Management System Congo has no Climate Database Management System (CDMS) to develop a coherent national climate database. Excel is currently used to key enter data - not in a systematic way, but depending on the internal or external needs. A tremendous effort to capture data was undertaken in the last years. The following files of synoptic stations were found and backed up on an external 3 TB disk: - Images files (bmp) (for the stations of Brazzaville and Impfondo) - Daily data in Excel format (rainfall and temperature) for several stations - Data in Climsoft format for several stations - Rain gauge data (in Excel format) - Wind roses (Excel & graphs) - Synoptic data : 30 years of monthly values of Tmin, Tmax, rainfall, relative humidity, insolation, pressure, wind speed and wind direction etc. for the 16 synoptic stations (Excel format) - Synoptic data : 30 years of daily values of Tmin, Tmax, rainfall for all synoptic stations (Excel format) All these files have been backed up on external disk. They will be quality controlled and imported in a CDMS upon its installation. V. Recommendations V.1 Climatological paper archives - It is recommended that a third person (Mr Moussa Said Gnoliwou) joins the archive reorganization team (Action: ANAC Congo) - For a given station, each archive box should contain one year of archives (observations books and MCTs) (Action: ANAC Congo) - Priority should be given to the synoptic stations followed by the climatological and agrometeorological stations and finally, the rainfall stations (rain gauges) archive boxes need to be purchased in November 2017 (Action: ANAC) - Strip charts (rainfall and temperature charts) should be the next priority.

6 V.2 Imaging - Imaging should also start with the synoptic stations starting with the opening year of the station. (Action: ANAC) - Attention should be paid to the quality of the images taken by the camera given the low performance of the copy stand. (Action: ANAC) - A better copy stand should be purchased to replace the current one if funds are available. (Action: WMO and/or ANAC) - A second 3-Tera bytes external disk is needed for a second backup of the data and images (Action: WMO and/or ANAC) V.3 Database Management As previously said, Congo has no CDMS and therefore, cannot develop an organized and coherent national climatological database. It is of utmost importance that once the new version of Climsoft is released, Congo be one of the first country to benefit from it (installation, import of existing digital data into the system a and training) (Action: WMO) V.4 General recommendation The management of Agence Nationale de l Aviation Civile (ANAC) of Congo to which the Meteorological Service belongs has shown great interest in data rescue activities. They purchased a PC, 250 archive boxes and are willing to continue. WMO support in the provision of a CDMS will be highly appreciated A follow up expert mission in December 2017 or January 2018 will help assess what has been achieved and maintain the enthusiasm.

7 Group photo of staff (4 to be contracted part-time through SSA with WMO) Annex 1