Climate Data Tools Training at AGRHYMET

For more than three years, International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) has collaborated with the AGRHYMET Regional Centre to improve of quality, accessibility and availability of climate data in West Africa. A training workshop on quality control methods for climate data and combination ground stations data with satellite rainfall estimates products using the earlier version of Climate Data Tools (CDT) was conducted for AGRHYMET staff in Niamey in July 2013. Since 2013, several improvements have been made on CDT and new features were added to facilitate the manipulation and visualization of data and generation of merged data. The present training came as the continuity of activities aimed at increasing the technical capacity of AGRHYMET staff to generate merged rainfall and temperature products with the new version of CDT. The main purpose of the training was to expose the participants to the new features of CDT, in order to strengthen capacity to conduct a quality control procedure for climate data at the level of their database, and combine ground stations data with global proxies (satellite rainfall estimates data and reanalysis product)

Training on IRI Climate Data Tools and developing a method for integrating climate data in Kigali, Rwanda

For more than five years, the Rwanda Meteorological Agency (Météo Rwanda) and the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) have been working together to implement the IRI’s Enhancing National Climate Services initiative (ENACTS) in Rwanda. The ENACTS initiative brings climate knowledge into national decision- making by improving availability, access and use of climate information. Météo Rwanda staff have received a number of trainings on the different aspects of generating the datasets and developing climate information products. However, the tools used to generate ENACTS datasets have been evolving through addition of several new features. As a result, it is necessary to revise the training and to expose the staff to the new version of the tools. On the other hand, Météo Rwanda has started operating a network of automatic weather stations (AWS) and a weather radar. The integration of these datasets to ENACTS datasets is very important to improve the quality of climate data in Rwanda. Thus, the current training activities had three major components: (1) make a full use of the IRI Climate Data Tools (CDT) to create and analyze ENACTS datasets; (2) develop quality control procedures and create scripts to integrate data from the AWS network into ENACTS datasets; and (3) create scripts to process and adjust the radar-based precipitation estimates with data from the AWS network and integrate the processed data into ENACTS datasets

Installation and Training on the Automatic Weather Station Data Tool (ADT) for MALI-METEO

The recent expansion of weather observation networks has focused on the use of automatic weather stations (AWS). AWS offer a number of advantages, including automated reporting at very fine temporal resolution. The challenge that many national meteorological services have faced with the exploitation of AWS data is that initiatives and donors have provided different types of AWS from different suppliers, leading to a variety of systems and networks in multiple formats. Although applications are provided with each AWS network to access and visualize the data, data access is still done manually and station by station. The Automatic Weather Station Data Tool (ADT) is a web-based application developed by the International Research Institution for Climate and Society (IRI) to alleviate the difficulties associated with accessing and using AWS data collected on different systems, networks, servers, and in different formats. ADT features an easy-to-use graphical user interface and enables national meteorological services to access, process, quality control, analyse, visualize and disseminate data from different AWS systems in a single location. The intention of this workshop was to install ADT for the National Meteorological Agency of Mali (L’Agence Nationale de la Météorologie du Mali, MALI-METEO) and provide training on its use. Installation and training took place from February 27 to March 10, 2023 in Dakar, Senegal

Remote training on the use of maprooms with MALI-METEO

A remote four-day training on the use of maprooms was given to National Meteorological Agency of Mali (L’Agence Nationale de la Météorologie du Mali, MALI-METEO) staff. The training session was held from June 1-6, 2023, consisting of two-hour sessions each day. There were eight staff, three of whom were women, who attended the training (see Appendix). The main objectives of the training were to demonstrate the contents of the maprooms to MALI-METEO staff, show them how to navigate through the maprooms and retrieve information from all thematic components in the maprooms, and to receive their feedback and suggestions on how to improve the maprooms installed at MALI-METEO

Remote training on updating ENACTS datasets with MALI-METEO

In many parts of Africa, the primary source of climate data is observation by ground-based weather stations. The main strength of these station observations is that they provide the true measurements of the climate variable of interest. However, in many places, stations are sparse, declining in number, and unevenly distributed. By integrating observations with grided satellite data, ENACTS overcomes issues of data scarcity and poor quality, and introduces quality-assessed, spatially and temporally complete data services into national meteorological agencies. The goal of ENACTS is to provide reliable and readily accessible climate data at high resolution to decision makers. A remote training on updating ENACTS datasets was given to National Meteorological Agency of Mali (L’Agence Nationale de la Météorologie du Mali, MALI-METEO) staff

Climate Data Tool for Regional Meteorological Service Center Data and Climate Experts

The National Meteorological Agency (NMA), in collaboration with the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI), has embarked on Enhancing National Climate Services. The initiative aims to bring climate knowledge into national decision-making by improving the availability, access, and use of climate information. These new data sets have been used to develop. The purpose of the training was to provide the necessary basis use of the IRI Climate Data Tools (CDT) to generate and exploit ENACTS datasets. A brief official opening ceremony preceded the workshop on the morning of August 16, 2021. The opening remarks were presented by Mr. Henok Hailu, Meteorological Service Centers Coordination Office Directorate Director. Representatives of IRI also attended the ceremony. The training brought together 35 participants, 10 Regional meteorological center expertise (2 from each region), and four from head office from meteorological service centers' data and climatology section. The objective of the NMA is to investigate and study the weather and climatic condition of Ethiopia to achieve beneficial effects for economic and social development. The Climate Data Tool (CDT) is a powerful instrument for quality control of station data, merging station data with satellite and other proxies, and processing station and gridded data. CDT was an essential resource for Climate data for gridded data outputs, down manipulation, data extraction, spatial and temporal analysis, rainy dekadal, monthly, season, annual characteristics, and climate extremes indices like drought and flood events. NMA is the first in Africa to apply the application and interpretation of high-resolution map products and reach merged data for different socio-economic activities of the community on using CDT products. The workshop was conducted using a participatory approach with a mix of PowerPoint presentations and the participants having ample hands-on time exploring the tool

Automatic Weather Station Data Tool (ADT) Installation and Training at ANACIM

The recent expansion of meteorological observation networks has focused on the use of Automatic Weather Stations (AWS). Automatic Weather Stations offer a number of advantages including automated reporting at a very fine temporal resolution (15 minutes on average). The challenge many National Meteorological Services (NMS) have been facing with the exploitation of AWS data is that different initiatives and donors have been providing different types of AWS from different vendors, leading to different AWS systems and networks. The data collected by these different AWS systems are in different formats and may sit on different computers. Although there are applications that come with each AWS network to access and visualize AWS data, access to the data is still done manually and station by station. This complicates data access, processing, and use. In addition, data from the different AWS networks is in different formats, which makes it even more difficult to analyze all the data without additional tools or applications that can convert the data into a common format and combine the data from the different networks. As a result, accessing, processing, and using these data has been a major impediment to the use of data from these varieties of AWS

Enhancing ANACIM High-Resolution Merged Historical Datasets by Generating Additional Meteorological Parameters

ANACIM already has a high resolution ENACTS datasets composed of rainfall and temperature data covering the period from 1981 to the present. In order to be able to produce a high-resolution evapotranspiration dataset computed with the Penman-Monteith method, a work has been carried out, with ANACIM staff from November 14th to 22nd 2022 at ANACIM headquarters in Dakar, to produce a high-resolution meteorological dataset required to compute the evapotranspiration

Regional Training for East and Southern Africa

From November 1-6, 2021, the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) and the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) of Columbia University brought together representatives from 11 meteorological services across primarily East and Southern Africa and the IGAD Climate Prediction and Applications Centre (ICPAC) to conduct three parallel capacity building workshops in the context of Accelerating the Impact of CGIAR Climate Research for Africa project (AICCRA) project. The three workshops, which were hosted in Kampala, Uganda, were on the topics of 1) the Climate Data Tool (CDT) and Automatic Weather Station Data Tool (ADT); 2) the IRI Data Library and Maprooms; and 3) Seasonal Forecasting Approaches. Altogether, the workshops aimed to advance the availability, access, and use of high-quality climate information to anticipate, manage, and respond to climate-related disasters and longer-term climate change in the East and Southern Africa region

Introduction to the Climate Data Tool (CDT): Remote Training with Ethiopian Universities

A remote six-day training on the Climate Data Tool (CDT) was convened from January 23 to January 30, 2023, with universities across Ethiopia by the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) of the Columbia Climate School, in close collaboration with the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI). The workshop, which was organized as part of the World Bank’s Accelerating the Impact of CGIAR Climate Research for Africa (AICCRA) project, brought together 27 participants from 9 universities across Ethiopia (and 1 outside of Ethiopia) to install CDT on their operating systems and practice navigating its interface to perform a number of basic analyses and visualizations of climate data at given locations. CDT is a free, open-source, R-based software with an easy-to use graphical user interface used in Ethiopia and 23 other primarily African countries. This software ensures quality-control of rainfall and temperature observations, alongside the performance of an array of analyses and visualization capabilities that are important for tailoring and communicating climate information