diff --git a/R/Utils.R b/R/Utils.R
index 4460018139d3bf55bfd8cc3f9b1b2a4f6f17f850..9dfcaa7337a39e6546fa77cf6cfa717b37d836af 100644
--- a/R/Utils.R
+++ b/R/Utils.R
@@ -206,7 +206,11 @@
       if (Sys.which("cdo")[[1]] == "") {
         stop("Error: CDO libraries not available")
       }
-      cdo_version <- as.numeric_version(strsplit(suppressWarnings(system2("cdo", args = '-V', stderr = TRUE))[[1]], ' ')[[1]][5])
+
+     cdo_version <- strsplit(suppressWarnings(system2("cdo", args = '-V', stderr = TRUE))[[1]], ' ')[[1]][5]
+
+      cdo_version <- as.numeric_version(unlist(strsplit(cdo_version, "[A-Za-z]", fixed = FALSE))[[1]])
+
     }
     # If the variable to load is 2-d, we need to determine whether:
     #  - interpolation is needed