![Linking farmer weather stations may help provide better data to plan in times of climate emergencies such as flood or fire. Photo: Gregor Heard. Linking farmer weather stations may help provide better data to plan in times of climate emergencies such as flood or fire. Photo: Gregor Heard.](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/5Q2j7ezUfQBfUJsaqK3gfB/dc9d1403-4ded-426e-bc2f-4ab036865038_rotated_180.JPG/r0_0_4032_3024_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
A NEW farmer-driven weather monitoring project, harnessing the data generated by on-farm weather stations will be utilised to help rural communities manage for climate emergencies such as flood and fire.
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Farmer research organisation Riverine Plains, based in Yarrawonga, northern Victoria, has won funding from the 'More Robust Weather Station Network to Support Climate Resilience' government project to investigate how on-farm weather stations and moisture probes can be better utilised to assist the broader community.
Recent flood events, where water has moved in unpredictable ways compared to past flood events and caught residents by surprise in terms of the suddenness of stream rises has highlighted the need for authorities to improve their flood forecasting capabilities.
Riverine Plains project officer, Kate Coffey said farm weather stations could play an important role in filling the gaps between official Bureau of Meteorology weather stations.
She said on-farm weather stations were increasing in number and sophistication as farmers looked to get an edge when planning weather-sensitive operations such as sowing, spraying, harvesting or irrigation scheduling.
These stations could help fill a role given official stations were often distant from each other.
"Official Bureau of Meteorology weather stations can be located up to 200km apart, so to fill-in the gaps, farmers often install on-farm weather stations to monitor temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction, rainfall and soil moisture in real-time on their farms," Ms Coffey said.
"Because these on-farm weather stations and soil moisture probes are networked and installed across a wide area, there is potential to harness them to better support existing Bureau stations and expand their usefulness to help communities prepare for climatic events such as fire and flood," she said.
Riverine Plains, along with project partners Birchip Cropping Group, Central West Farming Systems, FarmLink and Holbrook Landcare network, collectively manage a network of over 80 on-farm weather stations and soil moisture probes across southern Australia.
Ms Coffey said having the project driven by farmer groups meant there was a better chance to have growers choose to participate and share data.
"Working alongside our farming system group partners means the project has the potential to overcome some of the existing barriers to sharing climate data, so that it can be accessed by a wider audience and create better outcomes for emergency management."
She said the project was also looking to create a standard means of collecting and presenting the data from various farm stations.
"We are also looking at ways to improve accessibility by combining these separate networks into a single platform, while ensuring data is collected and presented in a way that meets the needs of users."
The project will also look at long-term funding for the sites and will investigate alternative ways to transmit data where mobile coverage is poor.
"With a warming climate likely to increase the frequency and severity of extreme climatic events, having greater public access to existing on-farm weather station networks could really help communities and emergency services identify and manage high risk situations," Ms Coffey said.
"This could be especially important when rapidly drying fuel loads may increase the fire risk or when saturated soils might increase the risk of flooding, or when a fire or flood is underway and communities or emergency services need more information."