This document discusses a term paper presentation on recent developments, challenges, and opportunities related to climate data. It outlines the objectives and significance of studying this topic, and reviews literature on data sparsity in Africa due to declining weather stations, issues with data accessibility, and quality challenges. Recent opportunities include increased data from satellites, reanalysis models, and climate simulations, though data gaps remain an obstacle for climate research and applications in Africa.

1. Haramaya University
Postgraduate Program Directorate
College of Social science and humanities
School of Geography and Environmental Studies
Course: Climate change science and Management
Term paper presentation on Climate Data: Recent Development,
challenge and opportunities
By. Ephrem Shimelis
: ID/NO: CPGP/065/14
July 23, 2022
Haramaya, Ethiopia

2. PRESENTATION OUTLINES
1.Introduction
1.1 Back ground
1.2 Objectives
1.3 significance and Scope
1.4 Methods
2. Literature rivew;
3. Results and Discussion;
4. Summary

3. INTRODUCTION
 Climate data could support a suite of climate-smart solutions that can
reinforce development gains and improve the lives of those most vulnerable
to climate variability and change.
 Historical and current weather and climate observations are essential for
many activities that include
• operational meteorology,
• identifying extreme events and assessing associated risks,
• development of climate informed early warning systems, planning, and research.
 Climate observations are also used as a baseline for assessing changes in
climate, for providing the initial conditions and evaluating climate
predictions (Manton et al., 2010), as well as assessing the impact of climate-
sensitive interventions (Thomson et al., 2017).

4. INTRODUCTION (CONT`D)
 It may be argued that the need for quality climate data is more
urgent in Africa owing to serous vulnerabilities to climate
variability and change.
 However, use of climate data and information products has been
very limited in Africa owing to lack of useful information or
challenges of accessing existing data.

5. 1.2 OBJECTIVES
1.2.1 General Objectives
The general objective of this paper was to found and know
the facts related to Recent developments, challenges and
opportunities of climate data.
1.2.2 Specific objectives
 The specific objectives of the Paper were
 To obtain relevant information on the major concepts, facts and
figures related to Recent developments, challenges and opportunities
of climate data.
 To identify and describe Major factors and limitation of climate data.

6. 1.3 SIGNIFICANCE AND SCOPE
 This paper provides a view of the major facts related to
recent Challenges, opportunities and development of
climate data.
 Climate data are dramatically increasing in volume and
complexity, just as the users of these data in the scientific
community and the public are rapidly increasing in number.

7. 1.4 METHODOLOGY
 I undertook a convenience literature review related to Climate
data recent challenges, opportunities and development and visited
the web pages of Regional and Global Institutions like World
metrological Organization (WMO), and different published
scientific papers, reports and literature
 There was no limitation of the time period, but I gave
priority to scientific papers, reports and literature issued in
the past 10 years, with a few exceptions related generally
to immutable definitions and concepts.

8. 2. LITERATURE RIVEW;
2.1 Overview of Climate Data
 Documenting the past behavior of the climate system, as well as
detecting changes and their causes, requires the use of data from
instrumental, paleoclimatic, satellite, and model-based sources.
 The earliest instrumental (thermometer and barometer) records
stretch back to the mid- to late 1600s, although widespread land-
and ship-based observations were not initiated until the early to
mid-1800s, mostly in support of weather forecasting and
analysis.

9. 3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION;
3.1 Challenges to availability and quality of climate data in
Africa
3.1.1 Sparse and declining observation network
 One of the biggest recent challenges of climate data is data
sparsity.
 Data sparsity may refer to the lack of data to create useful
climate information needed to conduct meaningful analysis and
to inform climate resilient development.
 Generally, data sparsity refers to the situation where climate data
are not available or accessible.
 While this problem is prevalent globally, it is particularly
common in Africa, especially over areas where there are difficult
and remote geographies, conflict, and investment in data is a
relatively low priority.

10. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION (CONT`D)
 The primary sources of climate observations are the NMHS in each country.
 However, the observation network in Africa is seriously inadequate, with the
number and quality of weather stations in many parts of the continent in
decline (Dinku et al., 2017; Parker et al., 2011; Washington et al., 2006; Malhi
and Wright, 2004).
 The map shows uneven distribution of stations with higher densities
over Europe. There is also variability within Africa itself, with very few
stations over the forested and dessert parts of the continent (marked
areas on the map).

11. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION (CONT`D)
FIG. 1 Number of stations per 0.5° grid box for July 2013 used in Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCC)
Full Data gridded rainfall product Version 7. Map is generated using GPCC’s Visualizer,
https://kunden.dwd.de/GPCC/Visualizer

12. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION (CONT`D)
 There are a number of factors that has contributed to the sparse observation
network and the decline in the number weather stations over many parts of
Africa.
 The major ones include declining investment, social or political conflict, and
difficult and remote geography.
 social or political conflict have led to loss of data and disruption of
observations.
 A very informative example would be the case of Rwanda (Fig. 2).
 Leading and following the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, the meteorological
observation network was devastated.

13. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION (CONT`D)
FIG. 2 Time series of average number of stations reporting each year for Rwanda

14. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION (CONT`D)
3.1.2 Challenges to accessibility available data
 Even when data exist, accessing data from the NMHS in Africa may not be
trivial.
 Sharing of data with other institutions, within or outside the country, is quite
limited and often includes fees for provision when available (Overpeck et al.,
2011).
 Although all NMHSs are mandated to share national data via World
Meteorological Organization (WMO’s) Global Telecommunication System
(GTS), the data available from Africa are typically only a small subset of the
total number of stations and data types managed by the NMHS.

15. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION (CONT`D)
3.1.3 Challenges of data quality
 In addition to the challenges related to availability and accessibility of
climate data, the quality of the accessible data is another serious challenge.
 Low data quality may be characterized by poor accuracy or precision as
well as missing observations.
 Station measurements are prone to human, instrumental, and other
measurement errors.
 The other source of error, which occurs very often, happens during
entering data into computers.

16. 3.2 Recent opportunities and Developments of climate data
 Recently one of the key sources of climate data is space borne
instruments.
 Another broad type of data is model-based “reanalysis”: hybrid
model-observational data sets created by assimilating observations
into a global or regional forecast model for a given time period (such
as 1958 to the present).
 Future reanalysis methods will include more diverse observational
data types (such as atmospheric chemistry, biospheric,
oceanographic, and cryospheric data) and longer time scales
(including paleoclimatic time scales)
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION (CONT`D)

17.  There has been an explosion in data from numerical climate model
simulations, which have increased greatly in complexity and size. Data from
these models are expected to become the largest and the fastest-growing
segment of the global archive.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION (CONT`D)

18. 4.SUMMARY
 climate data are essential for climate change-related studies. There are many
sources to obtain climate data, including observations from weather stations,
interpolated surfaces, and climate models’ predictions.
 However, the quality of the climate data and availability of climate variables
vary considerably. It is important to know the sources and to understand their
differences.
 The use of climate data and derived information products for research
and applications in Africa is very limited because of serious challenges
with regards to the availability of and access to climate data.