Climate Services Gateway
The Climate Services Gateway (CSG) is a platform that provides access to high resolution climate projections and analysis ready data for the southern African region. The Gateway development is still ongoing as well as the processing of datasets. Data provision is done by the Global Change Institute (GCI) at the University of the Witwatersrand (WITS) in South Africa and the Climate Service Center Germany (GERICS), Helmholtz-Center Hereon Hamburg, Germany. Postprocessing, indicators and CSG development are done by the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany.
Analysis Ready Data
We provide pre-processed and analysis ready raw and bias adjusted data from 23 CMIP6 GCMs and 9 CORDEX-CORE RCMs for the southern African region. The data was downloaded and further processed e.g., merging of historical and future data, bias adjustment, and remappping to a common grid.
High Resolution Climate Projections
We will provide new high resolution climate projections for the southern African region.
Climate Variables
We selected 10 climate variables needed for e.g., hydrological modelling, agriculture, and ecosystem modelling. The variables are: temperature (mean/min/max), precipitation, wind speed, humidity, and solar radiation (rlus, rlds, rsus, rsds). They are available for all data collections (GCMs and RCMs) for the historical period and future period (until 2100) as one time series.
Indicators
We provide relevant climate and hydrological indicators for the southern African region. E.g., the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and the Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index, Water Budget, and Aridity Index (AI). The indicators are available for all data provided data collections (GCMs and RCMs).
Sum/Mean Periods
We provide the mean and sum of the 20yr and 30yr periods for all GCMs and RCMs and indicators as yearly, monthly, and seasonal means/sums. In addition each daily dataset has yearly data for visualization and a quick overview.
Spatial & Time Subsetting
We provide spatial and time subsetting of the data on request. The data can be sliced for a specific region or period. In the future we plan to provide a web interface for spatial and time subsetting.
Metadata
For transparency and reproducibility we provide extended and adjusted metadata for all datasets. Metadata is currently not available and stored for all datasets but will be provided in the future.
Provenance
For transparency and reproducibility we provide provenance information for all datasets. Processing steps are documented and stored in the Climate Services Gateway within a provenance graph.
Visualization
We provide a map and time series visualization of the data. The map visualization is based on a GeoTIIFF file which is generated from the NetCDF file on demand. Coloring is changeable and based on the IPCC color palette. The map visualization is interactive and allows zooming and panning. The time series visualization is based on the GeoTIFF file and is enhanced with a trend and moving average.
Download
All data can be downloaded as NetCDF files, text or Geotiff files (for small datasets) as single files or using WGET. On request data can be slice for a specific region or period.