ANOTHER WEATHER STATION FOR SOLOMONS MET SERVICES
Solomon Islands Meteorological Service Director David Hiriasia. Photo credit: Courtesy of David Hiriasia’s Facebook account.
The Solomon Islands Meteorological Services now has another weather station after the Tingoa Station in Rennell and Bellona Province went active last Thursday.
Director of Meteorology David Hiriasia confirmed this new station to SIBC News and says there is now a total of six weather stations across the country.
He said the Meteorological Service will continue to install more automatic weather stations to complement the six manned stations this year.
“Currently, with Rennell Tingoa Met Station now operational we now have six manned weather stations around the Solomon Islands and we continue to work to complement these manned stations with automatic weather stations, so we have done Guadalcanal, this year we will move onto Malaita and the rest of the year we will spend in terms of the installation of automatic weather stations to complement the six manned weather stations.”
SIBC News understands the newly established Tingoa Met station began transmitting data to Honiara since last Thursday.
Meanwhile, the Meteorological Service Director says the Tingoa Meteorological Station is vital not only for Solomon Islands, but also for the whole of the Pacific region.
David Hiriasia told SIBC News the Rennell Bellona and Temotu regions have been known as hot spots for cyclone formation and having a weather station in Tingoa is locally and regionally important.
“As we are all aware Rennell Bellona and Temotu Provinces are hot spots for cyclone formation and so getting data from those two regions are very important in terms of cyclone monitoring and forecasting and it’s not only to benefit people of Rennell Bellona but this is a major achievement for the whole of Solomon Islands and the region as a whole.”
The Director of Meteorology also said the Tingoa weather station is a very strategic location in terms of getting data for tropical cyclone monitoring.
“Getting Met data from this station is very important and in fact this will become a strategic location in terms of tropical cyclone monitoring, so we have managed to do that now and it took us a little while to build the office and make it operational, but as I said we are now starting to do observations and send out data to World data centers.”