About SASSCAL WeatherNet
Background information on the SASSCAL WeatherNet
The SASSCAL WeatherNet was established to augment the regional weather monitoring network through the installation of Automatic Weather Stations (AWS) that record weather conditions including rainfall, air and soil temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction, barometric pressure, solar radiation, leaf wetness and other sensor data. The recorded data is published on a website accessible at http://sasscalweathernet.org/ for easy and open access.
Stations
The WeatherNet station network consists of 164 stations spread across Angola, Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, and Zambia.
The stations are distributed as follows:
Angola
Botswana
Namibia
South Africa
Zambia
Total
Online
5
12
32
11
9
69
Partially Online
6
5
12
2
4
15
Offline
6
5
15
2
10
36
Failed
28
3
3
0
1
35
Total
45
20
62
15
20
162
Table 1: WeatherNet stations per country by status
Types
There are 3 main station types/brands:
Campbell Scientific – 68
Adcon – 80
Mike Cotton – 14
Temporal and spatial resolution
The data is collected in one of the following ways:
Once per hour – Every 60mins
2 times per hour – Every 30 mins
4 times per hour – Every 15 mins
6 times per hour – Every 10mins
Climate/weather variables
The following 8 variables are recorded as standard:
Air + Soil Temperature
Barometric Pressure
Humidity
Leaf Wetness
Rainfall
Solar Radiation
Wind Speed
Wind Direction
Additionally, a station could be equipped with one or more of the following sensors:
Fog
Dew point
Soil Moisture
Data Transmission and Storage
The transmission of the data from the stations is done in one of 3 ways:
GPRS – the modem in the station subscribes to a cellular network using a SIM card and transfers a file of comma separated values to the SASSCAL file server at specific intervals
Intermediate server – the station transfers the data to a predefined server, which then pushes the data to SASSCAL file server
Satellite – the station pushes the data to a satellite service (Meteosat) from which SASSCAL downloads through a portal and further processes the data for presentation
Following transmission, the data is stored in its raw format on the SASSCAL file server which is hosted in the cloud.
The web application that’s also hosted on a SASSCAL server on the cloud contains routines that parse the raw files on the file server at specified intervals and store the individual records in a database hosted on the same web app server. It is from the database that the values are read and published on the public facing website.
To ensure data security, a backup of the raw data as well as the database is done on a regular basis.
Data Usage
Data from WeatherNet contributes to regional scientific research, CHIRPS dataset development, decision-making at public and private entities, daily radio and newspaper weather services in Namibia and general public consumption. In Angola, Botswana, and Zambia, the departments of meteorological services have incorporated WeatherNet AWS into their national observation networks.
Additionally, the general public uses the data for information purposes by visiting the website (average of 90 visits per day from direct access, search and referral) or subscription to the daily weather mails which currently has a distribution list of 61 members.
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