The Earth’s climate shows great variability over different time scales, from seasons to decades to thousands of years and more. These variations and potential changes can have serious affects on human health, security and safety. The only way to know these changes are occurring and attempt to know what is driving these changes, is to keep accurate, long-term records of the atmosphere and other climate indicators (e.g. global mean Earth surface temperature and precipitation).

By carefully monitoring the climate, the effects of extreme events can be lessoned and prepared.

Monitoring the global climate also helps with regional or national weather predictions. Local conditions do not occur in isolation to the rest of the world, and the status of the regional and global climate directly influences local weather.

 Source:  "WMO-Climate Services" - http://www.wmo.int/pages/themes/climate/climate_monitoring.php

Regional monitoring is amongst the mandatory functions of WMO Regional Climate Centres.

The SADC-CSC Gaborone Regional Climate Centre perform all mandatory functions covering the domain of climate monitoring recommended by WMO over SOUTHERN AFRICA :

• Monthly climate analyse maps,
• Monthly climate anomalies maps,
• Reference climatologies,
• Climate watches,
• Training; Research and Development (R&D). 

Besides, National climate monitoring is usually a key responsibility of the National Meteorological and Hydrological Service.  Most HMHSs continuously monitor the national climate to help with forecasting and predictions. Please Consult RCC Members section.