Background
Africa is one of the most vulnerable continents with regard to climate change and variability due to its high exposure and sensitivity to climate hazards. To compound this adversity, the continent has a low adaptive capacity. Although climate information and services are critical inputs for effective climate risk management, the use of climate information and science in Africa has been very limited. The main obstacles include lack of appropriate climate information and services due to the poor meteorological infrastructure and human resources capacity to deliver robust climate services. The surface meteorological stations of the continent are sparse and its upper air observations network is poor as well. Various initiatives such as the Global Climate Observing System (GCOS) are ongoing with the aim of improving the meteorological infrastructure in Africa but further activities need to be undertaken in this respect.
Another serious impediment in using climate information in Africa is the poor understanding of scientific uncertainties and capacity to integrate climate issues into practices. Scientific understanding of the climate system is vital to improve the climate predictability and help users incorporate known uncertainties into their decision-making.
Furthermore, the climate systems which affect Africa are not well studied. For example, various studies indicated that the rainfall of the Horn of Africa has a strong relationship with ENSO but it is not studied exhaustively to include this effect in climate modeling. Moreover, various initiatives and projects tried to study the African weather and climate systems through experiments such as the African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analyses (AMMA) project in order to improve the climate and weather services of the region. Such kind of experiments need to be replicated in other parts of the continent so that the weather and climate systems can be understood. In climate science systematic study of the climate at a specific location and time period is consistently given more attention in terms of:
1) developing the scientific understanding of past and present climate, climate variability, climate predictability, climate change including feedbacks from climate impacts;
2) seasonal forecasting;
3) progress in the modeling and projection of regional climate and sea level change;
4) observations of climate, including past climate, and assessment of trends and anomalies; and
5) gaps and uncertainties in current knowledge.
In addition to that, the weather and climate modeling facilities and know-how in Africa are not yet well developed. Consequently, the modeling capacity of Africa needs to be enhanced by creating centers of excellence.
ACPC being an African institution responsible for addressing:
• Needs assessments of the climate services to improve the ability to respond to local users
• Quality analysis of climate data for decision support tools;
• Translate science into policy and practice;
• Serve as a bridge between research, policy and practice; and,
• Strive to build capacities both in the climate and user communities.
With the above gaps in capacity and knowledge, as well as direction of focus, ACPC is engaged in the following main areas of work related to climate service delivery covering data, science, information and applications
Country Pilot Projects
ACPC’s response to the foregoing continental challenges includes carrying out projects and studies in countries enumerated below:
1. Ethiopia: Based on the needs assessments, the Ethiopian project includes expansion of surface meteorological stations and upper air observations, rescuing historical meteorological data, upgrading and rehabilitating meteorological stations and human resource development for local staff members and users.
2. Gambia: The major proposed areas of interventions include upgrading data network, rescuing existing data and information, apply new tools and methods to enhance service delivery, data capture and storage, and build the necessary capacity.
3. Rwanda: Some actions points were critically identified from the visit on the premises by the ACPC team. Among others, data rescue/management, and capacity building including human capacity enhancement were essentially the priorities that should be addressed in terms of climate change adaptation.
4. Zambia, Mozambique, Malawi, Burkina Faso, Cot de Ivor, Mali: Needs assessments are ongoing or planned to define bankable projects that could be implemented in climate data, information and related areas
It clearly indicates the need to invest in meteorological infrastructure for a better research in order to improve data availability and quality in real time that can greatly influence the effectiveness of the short and long term predictions. To this end, weak climate services need to be supported, by expanding the observation networks and increasing the number of synoptic stations because most of the challenges faced by the scientists in their analysis are how to deal with poor coverage of climate data in any specific region.
African Climate Science Research Frontiers and African Climate Conference 2013
Africa Climate Conference 2013 (ACC2013)
The ACPC and The World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), via its Africa panel (VACS) and their partners have established a steering committee for the ACC 2013. The Africa Climate Conference 2013 is to craft an Africa wide agenda on climate research for sustainable development, linked to existing continental policy processes, partners and institutions (regional, national and sub-national) to deliver an Africa agenda on climate research, while addressing global research needs.
Climate Research Frontiers
The Africa Climate Conference 2013 Steering Committee has developed a foundational paper on the research frontiers in climate research in Africa, framed from the perspective of user decision support needs, which will form the basis of the conference agenda. There are three key issues that must be addressed though the frontiers. One is the priority to build interdisciplinary capacity, in other words to link three distinct communities – stakeholder users, research, and interface practitioners. The second is how to integrate multiple lines of evidence - historical data, global climate and regional model data, and process understanding - to deliver robust messages. Finally, there is the need to identify the limit of information and to quantify uncertainty.
Publications
Three working papers and a number of poster and ppt presentations are produced and available in the publication sections.