By: Alexander Adi
The Acting Director General of the Ghana Meteorological Agency, GMet, Mr. Eric Asuman says the Agency in the coming months will upgrade to a Weather Information Dissemination System, WIDS. This enables the weather service to provide up to date forecast to users.
It will employ a web portal to gain access to all weather related products based on one’s preferred location.
There will also be another component with the use of a short code on any mobile network, where an update audio weather report in selected languages will be sent to the subscriber.
Mr. Asuman said with this new service, the public will no longer accuse GMet of providing inaccurate or delayed weather information.
The Ghana meteorological agency is mandated as the sole agency with rights to issue weather forecasts and provide weather updates in Ghana.
The Agency since its establishment years ago used limited equipment’s and also analyzed the weather manually.
The weather service also used the traditional medium to generate and broadcast weather information. This over the years was fraught with many challenges.
Many consumers of weather information often criticized the agency for inaccurate weather reports whenever there was a slight change in pre-forecast weather information. But the Acting Director General Mr. Eric Asuman said that perception doesn’t exist anymore.
Per the public weather validation forecast conducted in the third quarter of 2022, the Ghana meteorological agency scored 82 percent; a feat according to the Director General that is well deserved.
Mr. Asuman said, the service will soon roll out an improved Weather Information dissemination system which will provide varied weather products to the user.
By introducing the “Nowcasting” system into the activities of weather forecasting with support from the UK centre for Ecology and hydrology which has about 500 scientists studying the weather, officials of GMet are optimistic that its Impact Based forecast will significantly improve.