ClimWeb

Africa faces some of the highest climate vulnerability in the world, yet its National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs) have long lacked the digital infrastructure to warn, inform and protect populations.

A January 2024 baseline across the continent found that:

• 85% of countries lacked the tools to fully support climate service delivery and public risk communication
• Around 52% of NMHSs had no website and almost no digital presence
• further 33% had websites with very limited functionality
• 54% had never published a warning in the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) format, the international standard that lets warnings be distributed automatically through channels such as Google Public Alerts and the WMO Severe Weather Information Centre
• Proprietary alternatives were unaffordable and unsustainable for most services.

ClimWeb closes this gap: Free and open source, it gives each NMHS a website and alerting platform that it owns and runs itself, so forecasts, standardized warnings and climate information reach the public in real time without the cost of proprietary systems. Built for Africa, it has also been adopted independently beyond the continent, by Syria's meteorological service.

ClimWeb removes the bottleneck between the production of climate information and its use. Through ClimWeb, forecasts and warnings reach the public through websites, interoperable CAP feeds and social media. It helps NMHSs streamline their operations, monitor data exchange, communicate climate information, publish short-term CAP warnings and highlight the anticipatory actions required. Its visualisation components turn complex data into usable information: an interactive MapViewer (National Hazards Watch) for weather, climate, hydrological, agricultural and socio-economic layers; CAP warning maps; city forecasts and city climatology; near real-time satellite imagery; an observing-network viewer and data-transmission performance monitoring; anticipatory action pages that bring together the hazard, areas at risk, key facts, recommended actions, risk maps and related CAP warnings; the Climate Change Atlas; and user-feedback dashboards. National teams are trained to own and maintain their own instances, building durable local capacity rather than dependency.

• NDCs / NAPs: the delivery infrastructure through which early-warning and climate-information commitments become operational services; Ghana’s Climate Atlas turns projections into a public planning service.
• Technology transfer (TNAs/TAPs): open-source technology adopted in 42 African countries, 580+ experts trained, 2,169 hours of technical support and mentoring.
• Sendai (Target G) / Early Warnings for All: ClimWeb + CAP Composer is the delivery layer through which African NMHSs publish standardized, machine-readable warnings — over 3,690 CAP alerts since 2022 (3,694 by 9 November 2026); 27 of 30 supported countries now carry a live CAP feed in the WMO Register of Alerting Authorities.

ClimWeb supports three types of decisions. At the operational level, NMHSs use it to issue standardized early warnings that activate national preparedness protocols — for example, Ghana’s meteorological service issued an aviation turbulence alert in June 2025 through the platform. For policy and planning, ClimWeb delivers climate bulletins, seasonal forecasts, and tools like Ghana’s Climate Atlas that inform sectoral adaptation planning. It also drives institutional strengthening: the digital presence and service quality it provides has helped NMHSs gain recognition, form new partnerships, and access financing.

Built on Wagtail/Django with an app-based architecture: every capability is an encapsulated module with its own data models, templates and API surface (forecasts, products, publications, MapViewer/GeoManager, CAP Composer, Forecast Manager, station metadata, dashboards and more). Flagship components install as standalone packages in any Wagtail/Django system — CAP Composer (CAP v1.2, OASIS/ITU standard) and the MapViewer/GeoManager. The companion Automated Data Loader ingests station observations through a plugin architecture (12+ published vendor plugins).

ClimWeb is designed as a national node integrated with key international systems. CAP feeds are registered in the WMO Register of Alerting Authorities (27 of 30 countries) and machine-consumed by Google Public Alerts (18 of 30) and the WMO Severe Weather Information Centre, so national warnings surface automatically in third-party products. Observations flow to WIS2 via wis2box, station metadata pulls from OSCAR/Surface via API, and the data helper module connects each instance to a shared ~800-dataset catalogue from global providers (ECMWF, EUMETSAT, EU Joint Research Centre). Reusable components — CAP Composer, Automated Data Loader, and MapViewer — plug into standard OGC services rather than duplicating them. Beyond the programme, Syria runs the full ClimWeb package, while Caribbean countries and Bangladesh use the standalone CAP Composer; Haiti, Fiji, Afghanistan and Moldova have requested it.

3,694 cumulative CAP alerts since 2022 (9 Nov 2026) · 27 of 30 countries with a live CAP feed in the WMO Register · 34 live instances · 27,233 product pages across 29 publishing instances.

South Sudan, Sudan, Ethiopia, Niger, Chad, Togo, Ghana, Gambia, Mali, Malawi, Burundi, Seychelles, Benin, Burkina Faso, Zimbabwe, Guinea-Bissau, Congo [Republic], Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guinea, Comoros, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Liberia, Zambia, Djibouti, Somalia, Mauritania, Central African Republic, Lesotho, Mozambique, Syria.

Live deployments span 31 countries — 30 in Africa, plus Syria, which adopted ClimWeb independently from the open-source repository — serving 34 national meteorological and hydrological services (e.g. Ghana Meteorological Agency, Ethiopian Meteorological Institute, Sudan Meteorological Authority, Kenya Meteorological Department, Mali-Météo), including dedicated hydrological services in Sudan, Mozambique and Burkina Faso. A further 8 national services and 1 regional centre (CAPC-AC) are in development; ACMAD is live and ICPAC runs the ClimWeb MapViewer (GeoManager) module; RSMC Yaoundé and 6 national services are queued to install. Overall, ClimWeb is in use or deployment across 42 African countries and 50 institutions, plus Syria; hosting combines national infrastructure, CREWS-supported projects and incoming Google.org cloud credits.

All figures come from the programme's live monitoring system: automated weekly collectors across every instance and companion system, gathering website uptime and SSL status, CAP feed health and alert counts, content freshness and product publication, station transmission (WDQMS), station metadata (OSCAR/Surface), wis2box telemetry, GBON designation status, WMO Register of Alerting Authorities records, Google Public Alerts coverage and social-media audiences. A consistency check gates every figure. The Country Impact Report (per-country before/after evidence) is generated from this dashboard.

• Live monitoring dashboard (internal, available on request)
• Public rollout tracker: https://climtech.africa/climweb
• Source code & release history: https://github.com/wmo-raf/climweb (plus wmo-raf/cap-composer and wmo-raf/adl)
• DPG Registry entry (DPG since 13 January 2026): https://www.digitalpublicgoods.net/r/climweb
• UN 2.0 Innovation Awards, June 2026 — People's Choice & Scale-up Excellence (2 of 6 across the UN system): https://wmo.int/media/news/climweb-wins-united-nations-20-innovation-awards; https://www.un-two-zero-week.org/shortlistedprojects-un-2.0-awards

Live portals, each an operational government service (full directory at https://climtech.africa/climweb):

Sudan · South Sudan · Mozambique · Ethiopia · Niger · Chad · Togo · Ghana · Gambia · Mali · Malawi · Burundi · Seychelles · Benin · Burkina Faso · Zimbabwe · Guinea-Bissau · Congo · DR Congo · Guinea · Comoros · Sierra Leone · Kenya · Liberia · Zambia · Djibouti · Somalia · Mauritania · Central African Republic · Lesotho · Syria · Sudan (hydrology) · Burkina Faso (hydrology) · Mozambique (hydrology) · ACMAD (regional) · ICPAC (regional, MapViewer)

In development (9 institutions): Botswana, Cabo Verde, Cameroon, Egypt, Madagascar, Namibia, Senegal and Uganda (8 national services), plus the Regional Climate Centre for Central Africa (CAPC-AC). Queued for installation (7 institutions): Eswatini, Libya, Mauritius Meteorological Services, São Tomé and Príncipe, Liberia Hydrological Service, Mauritius Hydrology Division, and RSMC Yaoundé.