In August 2021, weather stations developed within the BMBF-funded joint project RAIN were completed. They were installed on a bridge in the Haarbach in Aachen for medium-term testing.
The weather stations are designed to be as inexpensive and simple as possible. They consist exclusively of easily procurable components, with no component costing more than 25 EUR. The weather station is able to measure the most important parameters, such as air temperature, relative humidity, air pressure and rain intensity. It can also measure the water level and temperature if installed in a suitable place, such as a bridge.
The goal of developing these weather stations is to improve the database of climatic data in Ghana in a cost-effective way. A major difficulty in Ghana is to get actual and continuously measured climatic data from rivers. For example, even large rivers often do not have any level measurement data. Such level measurement data are especially important for fluvial inundation models to be able to check the correctness of the model results. But not only in the calibration of 2D-hydrodynamic flood models the data of weather stations can be useful. They help, as well, in the calibration of various water management models, such as water quality models and water balance models. For these models, continuous measured data such as rainfall or temperature from the weather station can also improve model performance. The weather stations will be installed by the end of the RAIN project in Ghana.