About Climate Data for the Environment (CliDE)
CliDE is a data management system specifically designed for Pacific Island countries. It provides each country with a local, central database for meteorological records.
In some countries, it holds over 100 years of digitised climate data history. It's the only system of its kind in the Pacific.
The Bureau is the lead agency for developing and maintaining CliDE. We're developing it with Pacific national meteorological services.
Video: Highlights – Climate Data for the Environment
CliDE underpins a range of vital services for Pacific communities. Such as maximising hydropower generation and assisting public health services.
CliDE was first released in 2009, and has been gradually developed to keep pace with data management needs in Pacific Island countries.
So we have a malaria issue going on right now in the northern Guadalcanal region.
CliDEsc is the application tool that’s attached to the climate database system for environment.
CliDEsc provides customised products and services, like the MalaClim early warning system.
So in the MalaClim early warning system, there is a threshold that we use to forecast rainfall for the malaria season.
The information that we provide goes to the malaria department, and the malaria department action the planning to the communities in trying to reduce malaria cases.
CliDE database system is for storing and archiving climate data.
Some of the parameters we store there includes rainfall, temperature, humidity, wind direction, wind strength, and we can also record the visibility and cloud cover.
It secures our data. If a natural disaster destroys our archive room, we have digitised copies of our climate data.
There's 1000s and 1000s of pages still with us.
It is very, very important for us to digitise all those paper records, a time will come when those paper records will just crumble and go into pieces.
A major achievement for COSPPac has been making data more secure and accessible using cloud technology.
In the last five years, the cloud backup system was initiated.
Every single day there is a backup happening. So if we lose that data, we could lose only hours or minutes of data.
It makes our life easy. Whatever data we need, it's just a click away.
With a very robust backup and installation system, CliDE is the best we could ask for.
CliDE is built on tomorrow's technology.
The best gift we can give to our future generation is a set of quality-controlled climate data.
Supporting climate monitoring and prediction
Long-term climate data helps communities, businesses and governments understand their local climate and make informed decisions. This can help manage risks posed by climate variability and change.
We work with Pacific Island countries to rescue and archive their data in the system. This helps ensure data is safe, secure, and available for future climate analyses.
The system supports:
- digital archive of national, long-term climate data records
- quality control of observations
- generation of products to support planning for climate-related risks.
How the system and its data are used
The system is freely available. We designed it for the 15 national meteorological services in our partner countries and territories for day-to-day operations. This includes:
- archiving of meteorological data and metadata
- quality control of observations
- basic analysis and reporting of historical and recent climate data.
The data is used to develop information products and services. These products and services inform decision-making by businesses, governments and communities. For example, recent climate data is used for:
- aviation operations
- insurance claim verification
- infrastructure development.
Longer-term climate data is critical for building an understanding of how the climate is changing. It can be used to:
- verify climate outlooks
- support climate change research
- improve climate-related safety and security
- monitor and compare droughts and other extreme climate events.
Supporting national meteorological services
We supply and maintain the software and equipment that stores climate information in each partner country. We also provide training to support the national meteorological services to use CliDE to meet the needs of their community.
For more information on the project, contact us.
Making climate products accessible
Products tailored for specific sectors can be accessed using the Climate Data for the Environment services application client (CliDEsc). It includes tools that allow you to generate data and products from the database.
CliDEsc was developed by the New Zealand National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Limited (NIWA).
Observational data from CliDE is also included in the Pacific Climate Change Data portal.