SADC moves towards harmonised Climate Data Management Systems

Southern African Development Community (SADC) Member States are making progress towards harmonisation of their climate data management systems, a move expected to result in the adoption of standard approaches for the collection, storage, and homogenisation of national climate data.

This emerged from a week-long Capacity-Building Workshop for Member States on ‘Homogenisation of Climate Data and Workshop to Initiate Harmonisation of Climate Data Management System (CDMS) in the SADC Region’ held in Johannesburg, South Africa, from 31st  July to 4th August 2023.

Presentations made during the workshop demonstrated that most Member States had functional CDMSs, some of which have been in existence for more than 20 years. The most common software used by Member States is Climsoft, a free open-source software that allows users to store climatic data in a secure and flexible manner and enables easy extraction of useful information from the data that can be used to produce summary reports, maps or diagrams.