UNIVERSITY OF BOTSWANA · DEPARTMENT OF PHYSICS
RAMP Lab develops the climate datasets, statistical methods, and software tools that underpin drought monitoring, food security early warning, and climate services across Southern Africa - and is helping build the 3D-PAWS instrumentation capability to deepen Botswana's own observation network.
About the Lab
Department of Physics
Faculty of Natural and Applied Sciences
School of Physical and Life Sciences
University of Botswana
RAMP Lab is a computational research group within the UB Department of Physics. Our research is built around climate datasets, statistical analysis, and software tools - and we collaborate widely across SADC and internationally. Across all of this work, our overarching aim is to connect climate science to policy and planning, using climate knowledge to directly support development outcomes in Botswana and the region.
We are also developing hands-on instrumentation capabilities: a 3D-printer and 3D-PAWS (3D-Printed Automatic Weather Station) facility will allow the lab to fabricate low-cost weather stations, support BDMS in operational deployments, and give meteorology students at UB direct experience building the instruments they will eventually rely on.
Research Themes
Understanding how rainfall varies in space and time across Southern Africa - from seasonal totals to onset, cessation, and intra-seasonal breaks.
Operational tools and methods for detecting, monitoring, and communicating food security stress before it becomes crisis.
Multi-indicator approaches to detecting, classifying, and communicating drought conditions across Botswana and Southern Africa.
Translating climate science into decision-relevant information for farmers, governments, and humanitarian actors.
Satellite-derived rainfall, vegetation, and land surface datasets - validated, blended, and made operationally useful for Southern Africa.
in collaboration with BDMS
Low-cost, 3D-printed automatic weather stations for expanding Botswana's surface observation network and training the next generation of meteorologists.
in collaboration with UCAR & BDMS
Latest
RAMP Lab will participate in a 3D-PAWS capacity-building training alongside UCAR, the Ethiopian Meteorological Institute, and BDMS, 10-23 May 2026, advancing low-cost weather station deployment across Southern Africa.
Read more →A three-day technical training at UB introduced BDMS meteorologists to methods for blending CHIRPS satellite-derived rainfall with surface station observations to produce improved gridded datasets for Botswana.
Read more →Dr. Greg Husak of the UCSB Climate Hazards Center delivered a visiting scientist lecture sharing research on rainfall estimation and climate hazards monitoring across Africa.
Read more →Data & Tools
Operational seasonal rainfall monitoring platform for Botswana. Automatically updated rainfall maps and time-series derived from blended CHIRPS satellite data and surface station observations.
Interactive tool for exploring how rainfall and climate across Southern Africa respond to different ENSO phases - El Niño, La Niña, and Neutral conditions.
Sign up for news to hear when this launches. Follow news →
A suite of operational food security and climate monitoring tools used by the SADC Climate Services Centre and FEWS NET country offices across Southern Africa.
Learn more →Also from the lab