The Southern African Development Community (SADC), through the SADC Climate Services Centre (CSC), is organizing the Twenty Third Southern African  Regional Climate Outlook Forum (SARCOF-23), at the Hotel de Convenções de Talatona (HCTA), Talatona, Luanda, Angola, from 28 to 30 August 2019. The objective of the Forum is to disseminate the seasonal rainfall and temperature forecast/advisory for the upcoming seasons (October - December 2019, January to March 2020) . The theme for this year is “Understanding the Earth System to build resilience against recurring extreme weather and climate events in SADC region”. Delegates are kindly requested to register in the Forum Registration Form on the link below.

Further information is provided in the official announcement and related documents below:

 SARCOF-23 Full Announcement  [480kb]

 Draft Programme - SARCOF-23 Forum [480kb]

 Official Opening Ceremony Programme [157kb]

 SARCOF-23 Information Note [400kb]

  Forum Registration Form

High Performance Computing System Administration Training - 4th to 8th March 2019

The training was organized for National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs) system administrators and regional staff to build capacity on the usage and administration of the High Performance Computing (HPC) cluster installed at the centre and the modelling servers foreseen to be procured for NMHSs of SADC member states under the SARCIS-DR project. This activity is in line with the project implementation plan approved by the African Development Bank. The training was facilitated by CSC staff.

Training Objectives
The objectives of the training were:
• to introduce National Meteorological and Hydrological Services to computer clusters and the concept of high performance computing, both the software and hardware aspects;
• to build capacity on the usage and administration of the HPC cluster installed at the CSC, and the server infrastructure being procured for member states
The required outcome of the training was for participants to:
• be able to develop and run parallel tasks on an HPC cluster;
• have the essential skills required to administer and maintain computer clusters and other Linux based early warning system infrastructure;

Date and Venue
The training was planned for a duration of 5 days, from 4th to 8th March 2019 at the CSC training room located in The Village, Gaborone, Botswana. The CSC has the early warning HPC system and training facilities required for the training.

Participation
Directors of National Meteorological and Hydrological Services were requested to nominate Information and Communication Technology (ICT) officers, with preference to be given to officers with prior experience in Linux and computer programming. The following nine (9) Member States managed to attend the training: Democratic Republic of Congo, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Botswana, as the host country, nominate three officers to participate, hence the total number of participants from Member States was eleven (11).

Training Outcome

The training was a great success as indicated by the feedback from participants. The main concern from the participants is the duration of the training, with most feeling that one week is not sufficient to properly cover all the material. The objectives of the training were met, participants were equipped with the necessary skills to administer the HPC servers which are being procured for Member States. All participants were issued certificates of attendance at the end of the training. The Training Material is available for download.

The SADC Climate Services Centre (SADC-CSC) conducted a training workshop for National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs) on Regional Climate Modelling and Monitoring from 17 to 22 June 2019 in Johannesburg, South Africa under the Southern African Regional Climate Information Services for Disaster Resilience Development (SARCIS-DR) Project.

Background
The SARCIS-DR Project aims to improve the core capacities of national and regional climate centre (RCC) to meet the needs of Disaster Risk Management (DRM) agencies and socio-economic sectors for effective use of weather and climate services and community-focused and real-time early warning systems (EWS).
During the scoping mission carried in 15 SADC NMHSs from November 2018 to January 2019, it was found that only five (5) were running climate models. The reason for this anomaly is that Member States lack proper infrastructure to run the Climate Models and lack adequately skilled personnel. The SARCIS-DR Project, as part of its implementation plan will be providing Computer Servers for modelling to Member States, and this training was meant to build the capacity of experts from member states on installation, running of model and analysis of outputs. Building capacity of Climate Modelling Experts from NMHSs on climate change projections using Regional Climate Models will enhance the level of climate change mitigation and adaptation at National level.

The Training Objectives were to:

(i) introduce NMHSs the Principles of Regional Climate Modelling
(ii) build capacity on the usage of the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP) Regional Climate Model (RegCM)
(iii) build capacity on the visualization of the climate model outputs
(iv) train trainers for the region.

Participation
Experts from the National Meteorological/Hydrological Services from Thirteen (13) Member States attended the training workshop, namely: Angola, Botswana, Comoros, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Outcomes of the training
This training workshop was first ever regional climate modelling training facilitated by SADC and revealed to be a great success as indicated by the feedback from participants. The main challenge was limited time, as downloading data and running climate simulations on laptops requires several days. This was addressed by preparing installation environment (Ubuntu Operating System) and pre-downloading some dataset on cloned external flash disks before the training. The training objectives were met, participants were equipped with the necessary skills to install, run a climate model and visualize/analyse outputs. The Training Material is available for download from the following links:

Training material link
Training material alternative link
Pictures

Mid-Season Review and Update of the Twenty Second Southern African Climate Outlook Forum (SARCOF-22 UPDATE)

The Southern Africa Development Community (SADC), through the SADC Climate Services Centre (CSC) held the Mid-Season Review and Update of the Twenty Second Southern African Climate Outlook Forum (SARCOF-22 Review and Update), in Maun, Botswana from 13 to 14 December 2018.

Documents from the Forum may be downloaded from the links below

 The SARCOF-22 Review and Update Forum was convened by SADC Secretariat through the SADC Climate Services Centre. The support was provided by the Government of the Republic of Botswana through its Meteorological Services Department (BDMS). The meeting was also sponsored by 11th European Development Fund (EDF) through the management of African Development Bank (AfDB) under the ClimDev Special Fund (CDSF).

The forum was preceded by a 3-day Climate Experts Capacity Building Workshop of SADC National Meteorological/Hydrological Services (NMHSs) for purposes of generating the 2018/19 seasonal climate forecast update, which wasl also organized in Maun, Botswana from 10 to 12 December 2018.

 - Initial Official Announcement