The SASSCAL Director of Science and Technology / Capacity Development, Dr. Jörg Helmschrot, participated in the Southern Africa Regional Climate Services Workshop ‘Towards Exploiting the Full Potential of Climate Services’ that was held in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe from 29 November – 2 December 2016.
In four thematic session, more than 50 representatives of National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs) of all SADC members as well as from WMO, UNECA, UNDP, local and regional climate services users from selected priority areas as well as experts from academia and further relevant stakeholders discussed the status, relevance and the impact of climate science for southern Africa, with a particular focus on the implementation status of the Global Framework for Climate Services (GFCS) in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the fundamental role of high-quality observations for climate services. With a presentation on its SASSCAL WeatherNet (www.sasscalweathernet.org) as well as activities in the domain of rescuing and archiving regional climate data which is undertaken by the Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD, Meteorological Service Germany) in collaboration with the national weather authorities in Angola (INAMET), Botswana (BMBS) and Zambia (ZMD), SASSCAL introduced its activities for providing reliable data on climate and its accessibility at regional scale. Together with Filipe Lúcio (GFCS Office, WMO), Dr. Helmschrot chaired a session on Observation Data Capacities for Climate Services in the SADC region.
The workshop was jointly organized by the Swiss Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology MeteoSwiss, the GFCS Office at WMO, the Meteorological Services Department (MSD) of Zimbabwe and the Deutscher Wetterdienst (DWD).
