EXTENSION AND
DEVELOPMENT OF THE
SURFACE OBSERVING
NETWORK OF THE NATIONAL
METEOROLOGICAL SERVICE
OF MOROCCO
-VIGIOBS-
Introduction
During the last decade, Morocco was affected
by episodes of heavy rain more and more
frequent. This causes enormous damages and
human losses in particular during the two last
winter seasons. As a consequence, the
Moroccan government launched a national
program to reduce effects of floods and to
improve the early warning systems to natural
disasters.
Introduction
The contribution of the National Meteorological
Service of Morocco constitutes an essential part of the
program. This contribution aims to strengthen and
improve the National Meteorological Service Observing
and Nowcasting capacities by launching the VIGIOBS.
Project funded by a special governmental fund to fight
against the effects of natural disasters.
The project concerns the three main following domains
:the Strengthening and the extension of the Moroccan
radar network, the Densification of the synoptic and
climatic observation network and the Densification of
the upper air observation network.
VIGIOBS
VIGIOBS project extends over 3 years (20102012) and will enable the NMS of Morocco to
strengthen, modernize our meteorological
observation system in order to improve the
weather forecasting and warning system
Project Objectives
The main objectives of the VIGIOBS project are :
• Improved weather watch through the
strengthening of the real-time observation
• Improving the quality of weather forecasts
• Increase the density of the observational
network and its automation
• Cover all provinces of the Kingdom by WOS
• Strengthening the weather in mountainous
zones,
Consistencies of the project
The VIGIOBS project will enable National Weather
strengthen modernize and improve its weather
observation system by installing:
3 Doppler Weather Radar to cover East Region,
South-East and South regions
60 synoptic automatic weather stations;
90 auxiliary automatic weather stations;
06 automatic weather stations in mountain areas;
03 Upper air stations (new rawinsonde systems).
Project Planning
The project will be implemented in three phases
over the period 2010-2012. For each phase there
will be the installation of:
01 Doppler Weather Radar
20 synoptic automatic weather stations;
30 auxiliary automatic weather stations
02 automatic weather stations in mountain areas;
01 Upper air stations (new rawinsonde systems).
New Weather Radar Network of
Morocco
Several factors were considered in order to prioritize the
siting of new radars for optimizing the current network and
expanding the coverage of the weather radar network of
Morocco.
In terms of overall radar coverage for the entire country the
region from the northwest Atlantic coast south to about the
city of Agadir is relatively well covered, while the region
east of the Atlas Mountains from the Mediterranean south
through the Southern Provinces of Morocco is nearly
devoid of radar coverage. Many factors can be used to
assess new coverage areas, but the more important factors
being considered for new radar placements are as follows,
in order of importance:
New Weather Radar Network of
Morocco
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Areas currently without radar coverage where the addition of a radar
would improve public safety in the event of a weather related disaster;
e.g., estimation of precipitation over key drainage basins where flooding
has been common and resulted in loss of life.
Areas without coverage where a new radar would improve short-term
forecasts and warnings that could result in a decrease in economic loss
to urban areas, industry, and agriculture; e.g., as in 1, but where damage
is more related to infrastructure or crops rather than people.
Areas without coverage where radar could generally improve the
forecasts issued by the Department of Meteorology (DMN); generally
filling in the gaps found in the current coverage, or extending coverage
to offshore areas.
The addition of radar to improve warnings related to aviation safety
(strong winds, wind shear, heavy precipitation, etc.).
The addition of radar to aid specific projects such as hail suppression
programs and snow enhancement programs (e.g., hail algorithms to
detect hail-bearing storms).
DEBDOU
ERFOUD
TAN TAN
DAKHLA
Mosaic of proposed radar network, including existing and
proposed radar Sites
Automated meteorological station
network of morocco
Currently the Moroccan meteorological
station network is not very dense and is
partially automated. The weather
observation in Morocco depends largely
on the human presence. That implies
necessarily the absence of meteorological
data on large regions of Morocco and in
case they are present their concentration
and their treatment remains difficult.
Morrocan network before VIGIOBS
The Moroccan automatic weather station network presented
several problems:
•Low density of the network and bad distribution
•Variety of data storage format
•Lack of automatic transmission solution
•No automatic coding meteorological message
•Data transmission require in most cases human intervention
and the passage through other local treatment system
•Data transmission is done by technical means become obsolete
and expensive: the analogue leased lines.
VIGIOBS
The project comes to address these
issues for a better distribution of the
Moroccan observation network, a high
availability of data for their easy storage
and treatment at end of climate studying
and weather forecasting.
Tange
r
With VIGIOBS Project
Morocco Synoptic Observation
Network
256 Automatic Weather Station
Oujda
Rabat
Casablanca
El Jadida
Bouaarfa
Errachidi
a
Agadir
Ouarzaza
te
Tarfaya
Essmara
Eddakhla
Lagouira
VIGIOBS Observation Network
automatic weather stations network
For each site the proposed system consists of the following :
 datalogger,
 Sensors
 local system for concentration, processing, display and
dissemination
 radio modem for communication between the datalogger and
thelocal system of concentration.
 GSM modem for communication between the datalogger and
acentral concentration .system
automatic weather stations network
At central level (Casablanca):
Two central servers (in normal and backup
configuration) for concentration,
processing, visualization and
dissemination
automatic weather stations network
The local data concentration system allow :
 acquisition ,
 controle,
 arhiving,
 coding,
 visualization
 dissemination of meteorological data.
automatic weather stations network
Both concentrations, processing and visualization
servers of data from automatic weather stations use
the UDCS and CLDB as software. Those two software
are opened and accept different data format from
several types of automatic stations. The number of
stations that can be concentrated by those servers is
limited only by the communication infrastructure.
The central servers allow, through a Web
interface, a near real-time access and display of all
measured and developed parameters and state
parameters of automatic stations.
automatic weather stations network
UDCS :
is a data collection and switching system.
It provides users with web interface :
acess to all data, statistics and full
functionality from any computer on the
moroccan meteorological LAN/WAN.
It allow data validation
It allow network monitoring
automatic weather stations network
CLDB :
Is an unified structure based on SQL
Database Server and the standard data
access is based on SQL language is used.
automatic weather stations network
CLDB :
Climatological data in the CLDB system
are processed through different modules
before storing in database. They are
collected from different sources by the
data collection & decoding module. The
decoding module decodes received data
and passes them to the quality control
module.
automatic weather stations network
CLDB :
Detailed observing stations description
and history metadata is inevitable part of
climate data itself. Metadata are
organized in three groups:
 Station Geography
 Observation Description
 3. Station Extremes
automatic weather stations network
The transmission of data to the Local
concentration system :
Transmitted data
The parameters measured by sensors, concentrated
and processed by the datalogger and the state of all
elements of the automatic station
Transmission media
Connections between the datalogger and, local
concentration system will be performed by wireless
devices : Radio.
automatic weather stations network
The transmission of data to the central concentration system
(headquarters of the DMN in Casablanca):
Transmitted data
It is possible to schedule the transmission of raw data (from the
datalogger and the local system of concentration), coded messages
(SYNOP, METAR,… ) and state data from the local concentration
system to the central concentration system. The administrator of the
automatic station has the ability to configure a selected data
transmission.
Transmission media
The automatic station send data to central level by two media :
 VPN IP by the Ethernet interface of the local system of
concentration
 GSM modem directly from the datalogger.
automatic weather stations network
The local and the central systems of
concentration can send meteorological
messages by FTP to the Moroccan
AMSS (TRANSMET) who is connected
to the GTS.
automatic weather stations network
IMPLEMENTATION
In accordance with international standards automatic
stations are installed in parks. For good representativeness of
Measured Data realization of these parks is consistent with the
standards prescribed in WMO references (including Chapter 1 of
WMO No. 8) especially as regards the dimensions of the park's
protection, provision and sensors exposition ...
We chose to install the Automatics weather stations in the sites
of our partners and sites belonging to other State Department....
Thank you
for your attention