Considering Southern Africa, a major challenge in southern Africa is to find mechanisms to adapt to climate change and to secure water at sufficient quality and quantity for both, human well-being and the stability of ecosystem functions and services. Many countries of southern Africa face inadequate monitoring networks to provide reliable data for the development of efficient management strategies for sustainable water and land resources management, drought and flood risk analyses and forecasts, but also climate change impact assessments. The Southern African Science Service Centre for Climate Change and Adaptive Land Management (SASSCAL; www.sasscal.org) addresses this deficiency and complements the national monitoring efforts by operating the SASSCAL WeatherNet which provides a consistent and freely accessible data set at regional scale.