8 – 12 June 2015, Pretoria
For the first time a CM SAF Training Workshop on The Use of Gridded Satellite Data for Climate Services in Africa was been held in Pretoria, South Africa, from 8–12 June 2015. It was conducted in close co-operation with EUMETSAT and, kindly, hosted by the South African Weather Service (SAWS).
More than 80 applications showed the great need to such training events. 21 participants from 13 African countries were selected based on their professional background and the potential usage of CM SAF climate data in their daily work.
The main goal of the workshop was to introduce the data and services provided by CM SAF and to learn the handling of CM SAF data in hands-on exercises. The classroom phase was supplemented by a preceding online phase.
During the classroom phase the participants worked on projects, such as the variability of solar radiation and cloud coverage over space and time, trendanalysis of global radiation, evaluations of extreme events or the agricultural potential, and station-based evaluations of CM SAF data.
For this and for future training activities, CM SAF developed and provided an Open Source Software, the R-based CM SAF toolbox, which will be made publicly available in the near future.