Opinion – É Logo Ali: Itatiaia National Park will lose the Inmet weather station

On September 26, the management of the PNI (Itatiaia National Park) received a letter from Inmet (National Institute of Meteorology), an agency of the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply, informing that the Automatic Station A635, which collects information meteorological data from the site will be removed to meet the demand of another city in Rio de Janeiro, Paty de Alferes.

Inmet’s decision to dress one saint while undressing another, confirmed by the blog and, that is, without any criticism of the need of the Paty de Alferes community, mobilized not only the administration of the oldest park in Brazil, but also representatives of the tourism chain and mountaineers who are guided by this information to organize trails and hikes, especially in the upper part of the park, the most complex route that benefits from the greatest amount of data possible.

Initially scheduled for the 26th of September to the 1st of October last, the removal of the equipment was postponed but, according to a note sent by Inmet’s advisory to the blog, it will be carried out soon, considering that there is in the area “almost totally uninhabited , without any representation for the neighboring municipality of Itatiaia”, an “overlapping of stations in the same locality”, and that there is “urgent demand for the structure in another important municipality”.

In an email to Inmet, the head of the PNI, Luiz Aragão, expressed his surprise and pointed out to Inmet that these stations, which, in theory, would overlap with that of the federal institute, “are there thanks to ‘online crowdfunding’ from employees, purchased and maintained by individuals, friends and partners of the PNI and today loaned for use by the Park”. As they do not belong to Inmet, their maintenance depends entirely on the goodwill of partners and collaborators, making the measurement of data precarious and informally transferring to third parties the responsibility for capturing information that is a vital part of the country’s intangible heritage.

“We are paying for an antenna that we put in one of these stations, the connection to the internet, the value of which was R$ 800, and so far we have only collected R$ 595”, exemplifies Aragão in the message to Inmet. And he warns that “borrowed” stations require an internet signal, posing a problem in a weather-unstable area that often prevents communication. “The Inmet station is always ‘on air’, while the others are depending on the connection”, he explains.

Although it is to be expected that a Conservation Unit of this size will be uninhabited, Aragão points out that the data obtained by the official station are used not only to guide the 150 thousand visitors who attend the PNI annually, but also for climatological studies, research related to fauna , flora, microbiology etc. Inmet’s equipment is located right at the highest point in the park, “a unique location on our continent”, allowing for exceptional measurement of information that is not available elsewhere.

“We have been the Conservation Unit for years in first place in the ranking of research carried out and under development in Brazil”, he emphasizes. The cross-measurement of data from the different stations installed, adds Aragão, not only records the low temperatures that attract tourists, but also, by monitoring the region’s rainfall, “helps to understand and prevent the dreaded ‘headwaters’, which begin precisely there, in the upper part of the PNI and go down the Campo Belo river reaching not only the lower part, but also the municipalities of Itatiaia and Resende, in the state of Rio, as well as Bocaina and Itamonte, in Minas Gerais”.