The Torres Strait Regional Authority (TSRA) has supplied all 16 Tagai colleges in the region with their own weather station.

TSRA Chairperson, Mr Napua Pedro Stephen, said weather is a key part of our lives and the stations would better help Torres Strait school students learn about and understand weather.

“The weather stations we have provided to the schools will allow students and communities to monitor their local weather conditions as well as provide TSRA’s Land and Sea Management Unit with additional weather data from around the region,” he said.

The data collected will supplement weather date collected from the formal weather stations TSRA has set up in partnership with the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS).

These weather stations are at Thursday Island, Masig, Saibai Maizab Kaur and a new station has just been erected on Badu.

Mr Stephen said community members are already highlighting how temperatures and seasons in the Torres Strait seem to be shifting.

“As part of our climate change work we need to track these changes and the TSRA has significantly expanded the amount of weather data collected for the region through the installation of additional weather stations above and beyond the two stations run by the Bureau of Meteorology,” he said.

“Information from the expanded weather station network will also be helpful to our local air services as well as for communities and to assist with safer boat travel as people will be able to access local weather conditions across the region.“

The schools are encouraged to register their weather station on the Wunderground weather website that collects weather data from over 25 000 personal weather station around the world.  The data from each of these stations can then be viewed by anyone with access to the internet.

Data from the TSRA/AIMS stations can be viewed at http://weather.aims.gov.au/#/overview

The Wunderground weather site is at https://www.wunderground.com/