MeteoShield® Professional on the peaks of Africa

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MeteoShield® Professional, the patented helical design of a solar radiation shield for atmospheric air temperature sensors is making inroads on the African continent. It was installed at the GAW station on Mt. Kenya as part of the WMO Global Atmosphere Watch (GAW) project by the Kenya Meteorological Department. Mount Keya is the highest mountain in Kenya and the second-highest peak in all of Africa right after Mt. Kilimanjaro.

Helical MeteoShield® Professional on Mt. Kenya GAW station

Helical MeteoShield® Professional on Mt. Kenya GAW station

25th Anniversary WMO Statement on the State of the Global Climate in 2018

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WMO Statement on the State of the Global Climate in 2018

WMO Statement on the State of the Global Climate in 2018

WMO Statement on the state of the global climate change has been published. It summarizes the symptoms of climate change. The detailed report can be found at this link: https://library.wmo.int/doc_num.php?explnum_id=5789

Action required - the outlook is very grim

While climate trends outlined in the 25th aniversary WMO Statement on the State of the Global Climate in 2018 paint a grim picture about the speed of earth’s climate change, the world meteorological and political leaders need to refocus to manage not only the easiest to measure symptom of climatic change, CO2 concentrations, but also the root causes as exemplified by the scientific community.

Fight the cause, not the symptoms

Arguably, the leading contributor to accelerated global warming is the erosion of natural vegetation and rain forests by unsustainable farming techniques and poor urban planning both of which can be grouped into what is known as the erosion of water catchment areas. Erosion of water catchment areas leads to the reduction in CO2 absorbing plant life and the acidification of oceans. Plankton has a great capacity to absorb all the CO2 that humans can muster, the problem is that the ocean must first absorb this CO2 which leads to its acidification and destruction of many sensitive organisms like corals which are homes to many oceanic organisms.

WMO Statement on the State of the Global Climate in 2018 can also be found in other major languages at the following links:



Weather as a weapon

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Weather as a weapon creates opportunities to destabilize economies and governments. 2011 East Africa drought. Photo by Oxfam East Africa

Weather as a weapon creates opportunities to destabilize economies and governments. 2011 East Africa drought. Photo by Oxfam East Africa

As silent wars are fought by embargoes and computer viruses to disrupt economies and destabilize governments, collateral economic damage due to weather events has become a weapon of war. Governments are staring to implement bans on weather data export and requiring more and more that foreign weather services maintain weather data infrastructure within their borders.

In the future, detailed weather data will become sensitive information for many countries. This will pose a significant challenge to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in maintaining accurate climatology information, as raw meteorological data and their metadata may become a controlled commodity.