Stay up to date with global weather news.
Kenya experiences a bimodal rainy season, with long rains occurring in the period March-June, and short rains in October-December. The short rains of 2019 started already early September and have not completely seized yet. This resulted very high total precipitation amounts, flooding and mudslides in East Africa.
Weather Impact welcomes Pleun Bonekamp as our new specialist in meteorology and climate change. Pleun has a master degree in meteorology, physical oceanography and climate and is currently finishing her PhD in mountain meteorology and climate change at Utrecht University. She has experience with different (atmospheric) models and big data.
We are very happy Pleun is joining our team, and we are looking forward to work together in various projects where she will be involved. Read more ›
Founded in 2014 by Gerrit Hiemstra and Arnold Lobbrecht, Weather Impact has grown into a company that creates local impact by providing reliable weather information and agricultural advisory to small-scale farmers in developing countries.
Over the past 5 years;
• we have served over 153.000 farmers with our weather forecasts
• we have delivered our services in 10 countries in Africa, Asia and Europe
• we participated in more than 30 projects
• we shared our knowledge in numerous workshops, presentations and conferences
Weather Impact presented how weather information can support farmers in their daily business at the “Geodata innovation in Myanmar Agriculture” event. In Myanmar, Weather Impact has developed a real-time agrometeorological advisory service for farmers and extension officers. Our forecasts are combined with agronomic knowledge on cropping cycles and farm activities, and in this way a real-time, weather-based advisory can be provided, unique for the location and crop of the farmer. For example:
Seasonal forecasts are issued by various centres worldwide, including the ECMWF. Weather Impact is experienced in bringing this state-of-the-art weather and climate knowledge to smallholder farmers. Currently we are working on operational services on the seasonal time scale. Because of these developments, our colleague Bob Ammerlaan visited the ECMWF annual seminar last month in Reading (UK) to learn more about the current status of seasonal forecasting and to share our expertise. The annual seminar’s theme was “Subseasonal to seasonal forecasting: recent progress and future prospects”. Read more ›
On September 20th, Weather Impact organised a workshop in our office in Amersfoort about the extreme precipitation project. In this project, Weather Impact and KNMI combine to develop a prototype of an improved warning system for extreme precipitation events. KNMI, the Dutch national meteorological institute, focusses in their part on improving the stochastic forecasts of the radar product (0 till +2 hours) and HARMONIE model output (0 till +48 hours). Read more ›
Crop Monitoring Service-Kenya (CROPMON) is a four-year project funded by the Geodata for Agriculture and Water (G4AW) facility. The CROPMON project has developed an affordable decision supporting information service for smallholder to medium-sized farmers in Kenya. CROPMON provides information services to the farmers on the actual crop condition, farm management advisory and a local 7-day forecast of temperatures and rainfall. Today, about 200,000 farmers (growing coffee, sugarcane, maize, wheat and grass) in Kenya benefit on a weekly basis from the CROPMON service.
Together with Satelligence, Weather Impact has developed an early-warning system for the fall armyworm (FAW). Every Monday, a weekly FAW risk map for Ghana (Fig. 1) is calculated based on a combination of observational data, weather forecasts and satellite imagery. Our model highlights the regions in Ghana where FAW are likely to land and lay their eggs next, thereby infesting new crop fields. The risk is calculated per Ghanaian district and given in 4 classes: “low risk”, “medium risk”, “high risk”, and “very high risk”.
At the 31st of May, Weather Impact successfully ended the Rain4Africa project. Together with 8 partners more than 125.000 small scale South African farmers were targeted with the best available weather and climate services, to increase their food production and reduce weather and climate related risks. After 4 years of project, Rain4Africa has now resulted in an operational service called “AgriCloud”.
April 2018. Weather Impact joins the NL-Food Security Alliance (NL-FSA); a community of mainly Dutch companies and institutions collaborating in creating tailor-made and sustainable solutions for the agri-water-food business. Food security is one of the biggest challenges for the coming years worldwide and is exacerbated by climate change.
“The NL-FSA delivers products and services from various expertises and contributes to the development of a profitable and sustainable agribusiness in Africa and Asia. The alliance strives to achieve its goals and at the same time contribute to the SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals). The NL-FSA performs in a sustainable manner with respect for people, the environment and climate change. “
