The South African Weather Service (SAWS) and the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) will work jointly over the next five years in various aspects of meteorology including weather forecasting and early warning systems in efforts aimed at enhancing the safeguarding of life and property against hazardous weather events.
Collaborative meteorological progress
Overall, the two organizations will carry out 29 cooperative activities in 13 areas of their work between 2025 and 2029. Among the activities that will be carried out as part of the newly signed program of action are: collaboration on impact-based forecasting; joint development of tailored disaster early warning platform; joint research and development of forecasting techniques for high temperatures and heavy precipitation; research on tropical cyclones; training on the methods and use of artificial intelligence (AI) for climate prediction; collaboration on the use of satellite for severe weather nowcasting; joint development of satellite remote sensing application products for early warnings of disasters such as severe convection, high temperatures, droughts and floods; and the development of nowcasting and very short-range forecasting techniques using AI/machine learning (ML) including Blending techniques applied to remote sensing observations and numerical weather prediction forecasts.
Preparing the agreement
This partnership follows the signing of the POA by Ishaam Abader, CEO of SAWS, and Dr Chen Zhenlin, CMA administrator and the representing member of the CMA at the WMO.
Dr Zhenlin led a six-member delegation on an official visit to the SAWS head office in Centurion. During the engagement, the two organizations sought to promote an exchange between China and South Africa on meteorological development strategies and concepts as well as to investigate the meteorological service and cooperation needs in South Africa.
The engagement also sought to: promote the cooperative construction of an operational platform for a meteorological early warning system; plan for the joint enhancement of South African meteorological early warning capability; plan and consult on cooperative activities of common interest to both sides in the future; and contribute meteorological power to the building of the comprehensive strategic partnership between the two countries.
The visit was made possible by the memorandum of understanding (MoU) on Cooperation in Meteorological Science and Technology entered into by the two organizations on the sidelines of Cop28 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, in late 2023.
Ahead of signing the PoA, Abader and Dr Zhenlin held talks on cooperation in building meteorological early warning, bilateral meteorological cooperation as well as pragmatic cooperation under multilateral frameworks such as the World Meteorological Organization, where they are their respective countries’ Permanent Representatives.
Speaking on the back of the engagement with Dr Zhenlin and his team, Abader, who led a seven-member SAWS delegation, was optimistic about the potential spinoffs from the collaboration: “We have a long-standing and mutually beneficial relationship with the CMA, as with other met offices internationally. We have signed an MoU at COP28 and in our interaction yesterday we have further refined and operationalized the umbrella agreement. We now have a more concrete plan to aid our collaboration and to jointly align with and take forward WMO directives.”
The Chinese delegation later toured the Irene Weather Office to have sight of some of the SAWS’ observational infrastructure including the weather radar, automatic weather stations (AWS), automatic rainfall stations, upper-air sounding system and the lightning detection sensors.
In related news, China recently issued the ‘Action Plan on Early Warning for Climate Change Adaptation (2025-2027)’, which includes launching three geostationary meteorological satellites to provide high-frequency meteorological disaster monitoring and cloud early warning systems for African, Asian and Pacific countries. Click here to watch the video.