EDITORIAL
The RRSU acquires, every ten days, data from the METEOSAT satellite through the Zimbabwe Meteorological Department, in Zimbabwe; data from the NOAA series of satellites through NASA in Washington DC, USA; and data from the VEGETATION instrument aboard the SPOT-4 satellite through FAO-ARTEMIS in Italy. During the crop growing season, from September to April, these data are processed into a number of information products on rainfall occurrence and vegetation development. With  lat/long, the following satellite image products are generated every 10 days for the whole SADC region: 

• Meteosat derived Cold Cloud Duration (CCD) images which provide an indication of rainfall occurrence and intensity. This images have an operational pixel size of 6-minutes (approximately 8 km).

• NOAA CPC Rainfall Estimates (RFE) provide information rainfall occurrence. The images have an operational pixel size of 6-minutes (approximately 8km).

• NOAA derived Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) images which provide information on vegetation development. This images have an operational pixel size of 6-minutes (approximately 8 km) .

• SPOT-4 VEGETATION derived NDVI images which provide information on vegetation development. These have an operational pixel size of 1km X 1km.

Digital country windows are extracted from the regional images and forwarded to the Meteorological Services Departments of the SADC member states by e-mail. Hard-copy maps with present and long term average and cumulative satellite information, and curves with time series for specific areas are distributed to a wide range of users. For more information, please contact the Regional Remote Sensing Unit