In the past few weeks, I have had cause to deal with meteorological data for some locations in the country. Naturally, I turned to the website of NiMET. I have a lot of respect for the scientists at that place because they know what they are doing but I was disappointed that their data is not as comprehensive as it should be.
I clicked up their annual weather report and found it contained a report for only Year 2012. It was the type of a robust report I expected, dealing with all the areas it should. The report noted the cessation of hail in Nigeria, a meteorological condition that used to be frequent back in the 1940s but has not ceased for all practical purposes. There is a conclusive 1-1.5degrees Celsius rise in temperature across the country when you take a 60, 70-year broad look. Very good report, but where is the overview for 2013-2018?
I found that NiMET does not have data for all state capitals, much less remote locations. Weather data has got to be big, extensive and detailed, covering as much area as possible across the land if they are to be useful for national development. At the bottom right corner of the NiMET site is a link to a global weather portal from a foreign organization. If you follow it, you will get an approximation for most locations you may want, a service offered by several agencies across the world. These are mostly AI data extrapolated from satellite-synthesized data and are certainly inferior to ground-truthed data obtained from actual weather stations.
What this brought me to is that we have a need for more weather stations in the country. Back then when my generation was in secondary school, we had what we called ‘Geographical Gardens’ where you had at least the wind vane, a rain gauge and a barometer. But of course, all those things are no longer there. I believe we should get back to having many weather stations and people trained to officially report data from them. All our over 700 LGAs should have weather stations and at least three staff trained to take and upload data from them to NiMET as a matter of national service. All secondary schools also can and should. All state government secretariats have enough space to set up basic weather stations and they should. An abundance of data on the climate gives data to our researchers and gives them both insight and a voice in matters as important as the changes in the atmosphere around us – a factor that determines our fate in so many ways because of its implications for planning, aviation, agriculture, engineering, and tourism.
