Support a Monitoring Station

Long-term weather monitoring is essential to adequately monitor climate change as well as improve climate and weather forecasts for specific countries or regions. As weather and climate crosses national boundaries and are linked as a global system, close collaboration between countries is essential to improve every country’s data.

A global network of weather stations monitors the surface conditions as well as the upper air atmosphere. This network is also used by Global Climate Observing System (GCOS), which is coordinating the observations of radio sonde stations within its Global Upper Air Network (GUAN) to collect and link the data of National Meteorological Services, essential for the compilation of climate records. However, there are still some “blank spots” in the overall network, for example in uninhabited areas (deserts, islands, mountains, etc.) but also in some developing and least developed countries. Monitoring the upper air system can be very costly as it requires a high investment in weather balloons and radio sondes. Also, in some developing and least developed countries, it is difficult to find producers that can deliver those parts due to economic embargoes or commercial restraints.

As a large number of the requests we receive under the VCP are asking for assistance in taking these upper air readings, which are beneficial to all countries and so are basically a “global good”, we are now looking for sponsors that will set up or support a specific station on a long-term basis. Support can take the form of setting up and maintaining a station in a remote area, supplying a station with necessary funding, helping with the acquisition of specific equipment or providing staff training in new technologies, necessary for running the readings and evaluating the data. The GCOS System Improvement Program facilitates the renovation or implementation of such stations and is helping to coordinate the respective needs of users.

To find out which stations need support, please contact the VCP Secretariat (RMO Office).