18 Aug 2017

Samoa embracing more sophisticated weather analysis tools

4:33 pm on 18 August 2017

Climate change has been blamed for making historical weather data undependable and prompted Samoa to look for a new weather and climate prediction model.

The Samoa Met Service's principal scientific officer, Tile Tofaeono, said weather predictions for Samoa had always been dependent on the historical data collected about the weather patterns.

These statistics were used to monitor and predict what the forecast would be like within the next three months.

Mr Tofaeono said the statistical method had worked well but with climate change, nothing made sense anymore.

Principal Scientific Officer, Tile Tofaeono running the Climate Prediction software with team from APEC Climate Center.

Principal Scientific Officer, Tile Tofaeono running the Climate Prediction software with team from APEC Climate Center. Photo: sprep

Samoa had now begun a transition to a new model being introduced by APEC Climate Centre in South Korea.

This system, called Dynamical, relied on advanced mathematics to predict what the weather would be.

A climate researcher at the APEC Climate Centre, Dr Won Moo Kim, said the Dynamical model used information gathered from state of the art weather watchers around the world including the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration in Hawaii and other advanced weather stations in Japan.

He said from this information they compiled the best prediction for the Pacific region and transmitted it to the Samoa-based Sectariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme, which then broke it down to Pacific countries.