The training and workshop was attended by climate staff of the National Weather Service.
The workshop commenced on Monday and focused on training climate staff on seasonal prediction and drought monitoring and ended today with a stakeholder engagement workshop on Early Rainfall Watch.
The early rainfall watch provides a summary of recent rainfall patterns, particularly the status of drought and enables them to improve seasonal predictions and monitoring.
“Giving information that we can be able to use to manage agriculture for example to manage what crops they can plant using this rainfall information” explained Senior Climatologist Kisolel Posanau.
The Australian DFAT funded Climate and Ocean Support Program in the Pacific has developed climate related tools that are being used by National Meteorological Services.
The PNG National Weather Service aims to produce a monthly Early Action Rainfall Watch that meets the needs of the humanitarian sector after the recent El-Nino that hit the country hard.
“In 2015 and 2016 we had en El-Nino event in PNG and most of our communities were affected by the drought and people were not able to get information earlier to better prepare so we had to spend a lot of money for disaster response so we plan to use this bulletin to reduce this cost” said Ms Posanau.