Afghanistan Meteorological Authority

The Afghanistan Meteorological Authority is located in Kabul, Afghanistan. The authority has been led by Abdul Qadeer since the late 1970s.

History

In 1996, Taliban forces sacked its office because weather forecasting had been banned as it was considered to be sorcery. Equipment was ruined and over 100 years worth of weather records were destroyed. Because of the ban, farmers were eventually harmed because drought information and forecasting could not take place. Also, in 1998, an Ariana Afghan Airlines flight flew into unexpected weather, causing it to crash into a mountain, killing 45 people.

During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the Afghanistan Meteorological Authority had one of the most advanced weather stations available at the time and a staff of 600.

Recovery

In 2003, France financed the installation of over a dozen simple weather stations around Afghanistan. The stations provide basic information such as temperature, barometric pressure, and rain fall. Also in 2003, the World Meteorological Organization in Geneva provided the Authority with copies of its lost records.

Canadian troops at Camp Julien assist in collecting data by launching weather balloons twice a day. The data is primarily for NATO and the armies of the U.S. and Germany, but it is shared with the AMA as well.

Sep 2016... Perhaps Canadian troops launched the weather balloons for upper air soundings in the past. But, today it is done by contract and NATO meteorologists working together at the Hamid Karzi International Airport on the NATO side of the complex. NATO has a Combined Meteorological Unit that is staffed by a Romanian Officer in Charge, Czech Republic military, and U.S. and Turkish contractors. The mission is to provide full services while the Afghans are trained to take over operations, which is in keeping with the NATO Resolute Support mission. As stated above, the data is available anywhere in the world under the Kabul ICAO identifier which is OAKB.