The Van-KIRAP project has supported the Climate Division of the Vanuatu Meteorology and Geo-hazards Department (VMGD) and carried out a major cleaning up of the archive room and brightening up the National Climate Archives.
VMGD is the custodian of Vanuatu's meteorological data that dates back to the 1950's and longest complete records in the Pacific region.
The data rescue and data digitization work is part of the Van-KIRAP project that pursues to rescue historical records that remains in old paper records that requires saving and converted into a digital format that climate and disaster practitioners are able to use in the development of early warning systems.
Furthermore, this data when digitized will help VMGD expand its knowledge of climate drivers, which influence what we see outside (weather/climate) day after day.
The VMGD Climate Archive room contains all hard copies of our weather observations register books from all our synoptic stations namely; SOLA- Banks Group, PEKOA-Santo Island, SARATAMATA- Ambae Island, LAMAP Malekula Island, BAUERFIELD-Efate Island, NAMBATU-Port Vila, WHITEGRASS- Tanna Island and ANELGHAUOHAT- Aneityum Island.
"Archiving historical data is very important to ensure future researchers, students, government agencies or any other relevant parties can have information readily available to evaluate climate variability over the decades" said Neil Livingstone Malosu, Van-KIRAP Climatologist (Data & Archive Officer).
“There are 5 stages of the implementation plan for climate National Archives- Cleaning, Sorting, CLiDE Check, Digitize & Scan and Archive, but currently we are sorting and updating our stocktake”
Photo supplied Caption: Van-KIRAP cleaning the VMGD archive room