Future Climate for Africa (FCFA) aims to generate fundamentally new climate science focused on Africa, and to ensure that this science has an impact on human development across the continent.

Watch the video to learn more about FCFA

LOCATIONS COVERED

FCFA is implemented by 5 international research teams working across the African continent:

AMMA-2050 – Burkina Faso and Senegal.
UMFULA – Malawi and Tanzania.
HyCRISTAL – Kenya and Uganda.
FRACTAL – Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Zambia.
IMPALA – Pan-Africa

African Climate Risks Conference

Future Climate for Africa hosted the African Climate Risks Conference (ACRC) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in October 2019 under the theme “dismantling the barriers to urgent climate adaptation action.” It brought together over 350 researchers gathering from 52 different countries across the African continent and abroad to discuss the latest research on African climate. It also provided the opportunity for many FCFA researchers to showcase their findings on the latest climate research from the FCFA programme.

LATEST NEWS

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Climate change predictions build resilience in African tea production

Researchers in the UK and Africa have teamed up to help tea producers better understand future climate risks so that they can reduce crop damage caused by climate change. Kenya and Malawi produce more than half the tea Britons consume and the crop makes up about 7% of Malawi’s GDP and 4% of Kenya’s. In recent years frosts followed by high daytime temperatures have reduced yields, as have longer and more intense dry spells.

UMFULA final workshop in Tanzania: launch of brief and handover of outputs

The end, but not really the end… what’s the best way to bring to a close over five years of interactions and collaborations? Well, it’s not ideal using Zoom, but we made the best of things on September 21st when we formally handed over the main outputs of UMFULA to the Rufiji Basin Water Board.

Using the IPCC’s Interactive Atlas to understand how Africa’s climate is changing

July 2021 Newsletter

FEATURED RESOURCES

Infographic: The Impacts Of Climate Change On Tea Production In Africa

October 12, 2021

Tea is a major contributor to exports and the economy, as well as an important source of incomes for rural livelihoods in Kenya, Malawi and Rwanda. While the tea sectors of these countries are expanding, they are extremely vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Tea plants are particularly sensitive to the climate, needing very specific climate conditions for high production and quality, and for that reason are grown in particular agro-climatic zones. Tea plants are also affected by climate extremes such as heat waves, droughts or floods. Climate change is altering the average climate and the pattern of extremes, and this will have implications for tea production in the future.

This infographic outlines some of the potential impacts of tea production in three different possible future climates for the growing regions

Infographic: How Can Africa’s Tea Growers Adapt To Climate Change

October 12, 2021

The impacts of climate change on the yields and quality of tea in Africa, significantly impact the economies and livelihoods dependent on the tea sector. As a crop which is already very sensitive to the climate, future climate change poses an increasing risk for tea production. Implementing climate smart agricultural practices is becoming more and more important to ensure African countries can continue to grow their tea industries in the future. Understanding what the future climate might look like and the types of hazards facing tea growing regions are important in identifying adaptation options that are relevant in the local context.

Managing long-term risks in the tea sector in Malawi, Kenya and Rwanda

October 12, 2021

Climate change poses a significant risk to tea growing regions, not only because of changes in average climate conditions but also due to the changing intensity and frequency of climate extremes such as heat waves, dry spells and heavy rainfall. Research from FCFA has provided new understanding for how the climate might change and how this may impact tea growing regions of Kenya, Malawi and Rwanda. Work has demonstrated the value of locally-relevant and context specific climate information to help tea farmers plan for climate change. The potential impacts of climate change for tea growing regions, requires urgent adaptation to safeguard tea production. This report outlines the climate sensitivity of tea plants, the likely impacts on tea crops and markets and potential adaptation options. The report provides on overview of risks and adaptation within Kenya, Malawi and Rwanda.

Brief: Climate Change and It’s Impacts in Burkina Faso

October 2, 2021

THE CLIMATE OF THE PLANET IS CHANGING, as is evident from steady increases in global temperatures and sea levels over the last 100 years. Scientists are clear that these changes are due to man-made emissions of greenhouse gases, notably carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning. In spite of efforts by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), emissions have continued to rise. How much the world will warm in the future is strongly related to how rapidly the global economy can decarbonise.

In this policy brief, we set out how the climate of the Sahel has changed in recent decades, what future changes are expected, and some implications of these changes for agriculture and flooding. There are many uncertainties when considering future impacts of global warming within a specific region. Here we present the range of plausible futures so that this uncertainty can be taken into account by decision-makers.

Performance of dry and wet spells combined with remote sensing indicators for crop yield prediction in Senegal

October 2, 2021

Studying the relationship between potential high-impact precipitation and crop yields can help us understand the impact of the intensification of the hydrological cycle on agricultural production. The objective of this study is to analyse the contribution of intra seasonal rainfall indicators, namely dry and wet spells, for predicting millet yields at regional scale in Senegal using multiple linear regression. Using dry and wet spells with traditional indicators i.e. proxies of crop biomass and cumulated rainfall, hereafter called remote sensing indicators (NDVI, SPI3, WSI and RG), we analysed the ability of dry and wet spells alone or combined with these remote sensing indicators to provide intraseasonal forecasts covering the period 1991–2010. We analysed all 12 regions producing millet and found that results vary strongly between regions and also during the season, as a function of the dekad of prediction. At the spatial scale, the strongest performing combinations include the dry spell indicators DSC20 and DSxl in the peanut basin. While in the south of the country, the combination of wet period indicators WS1 or WSC5 with the RG is fairly reliable. Focussing on Thies, our best region in the groundnut basin, we showed that dry and wet spells indicators can explain up to 80% of yield variations, alone or in combination with remote sensing indicators. Regarding the timing of prediction, millet yield can be forecast as early as July with an accuracy of 40% of the mean yield but the best forecast is obtained in early September, at the peak of crop development (accuracy of 100 kg/ha i.e. 20% of the mean yield). Although, the estimated yields show biases over some years identified as extremely deficient or in oversupply in terms of agricultural yields.

Aircraft observations of the lake‐land breeze circulation over Lake Victoria

October 2, 2021

The lake–land breeze circulation over Lake Victoria was observed in unprecedented detail with a research aircraft during the HyVic pilot flight campaign in January 2019. An evening and morning flight observed the lake and land breezes respectively under mostly dry conditions. The circulation was observed at various heights along a transect across the lake and onshore in Tanzania. Profiles of the lower troposphere were recorded by dropsondes over the lake and land. Convection-permitting MetUM simulations with different horizontal grid-spacings (including sub-km) were run for the flight periods. During the evening flight, the aircraft crossed the lake breeze front over land at 1627 LT, approximately 50 km to the east of the lake shore, recording a 6 g kg^–1 decrease in specific humidity and reversal in wind direction over ~5 km. During the morning flight, a shallow land breeze was observed across the eastern shore at 0545 LT. At least one region of increased and deeper moisture (previously seen in simulations but never observed) was sampled over the lake surface between 0527–0855 LT. This bulge of moisture was likely formed from the lifting of near-surface moist air above the lake by low-level convergence. The observations and model simulations suggest that low-level convergence occurred at the leading edge of the land breeze, which had detached from the main land breeze and independently propagated westward across the lake with wave-like characteristics. The MetUM simulations were able to reasonably reproduce the lake breeze front, bulge feature, and its propagation, which is a major achievement given the sparse observational data for model initialisation in this region. However, some timing, resolution and boundary layer depth biases require further investigation. Overall, this pilot campaign provided an unprecedented snapshot of the Lake Victoria lake–land breeze circulation and motivates a more comprehensive field campaign in the future.