Data management

In Zambia, climatic data are collected by district meteorological stations that are run and maintained by the Provincial Meteorological Office in each province. Each province also has some registered volunteer observation stations (collaborating stations) that collect daily rainfall. Usually a hard copy of all the collected data is regularly sent to the central headquarters of the Meteorological Service in Lusaka. The data are then supposed to be computerised, verified and archived. This is not always done for all stations and so, in practice, accessing climatic data in Zambia, and probably in other countries too, is not that simple.