RA-V Missions
The RA-V missions were a series of overseas trips, or “missions”, we took around the South Pacific. I was working for the Bureau of Meteorology at the time, on a project known as the WMO Information System or WIS. Our job was maintaining a catalogue of weather information that was being exchanged among the world’s met services. The larger met services were tasked with making sure that countries within a particular region were able to participate in the program, and the Bureau was largely responsible for the South Pacific, or the so called Region 5 (RA-V).
Part of this outreach called for a site visit, to ensure that the national met services were taught how to use the catalogue to gather and publish information that other met services may be interested in.
We visited 10 countries in the span of about 10 months with the purpose of sharing knowledge of the system that we were putting together. And although it was a work trip, I consider it an unforgettable part of my life.