The Future Climate for Africa programme has made substantial progress in understanding the African climate and has developed methodologies to evaluate the regional climate processes and impact-relevant indices which matter locally. LaunchPAD has been established to build upon these novel findings and methods to extend the work to more regions and systems, and to embed tools into automated software that will fast-track the understanding of how well climate models simulate climate dynamics in African regions.

It aims to improve the availability and use of climate information on 5-40 year timescales by developing region-specific automated tools for model evaluation over the African regions, promoting collaboration with international initiatives, and guiding research and engagement with model development centres.

The establishment of the Hub was made possible by building on existing FCFA research networks through researchers at the University of Oxford, University of Yaounde, University of Nairobi, University of Cape Town, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, and the Met Office, showcasing the strong legacy and importance of FCFA partnerships between British and African research institutions. The Hub will provide the platform for  African researchers who were deeply involved and have remained active in evaluation studies of the Met Office Unified Model and CP4-Africa simulations, to continue their collaboration efforts. The Climate Model Evaluation Hub forms a key part of the IMPALA legacy in sustaining and progressing the African climate model work forward.

The Hub will also focus on capacity development through a fellowship program for 10 early career researchers based in African universities who will closely work with teams at the University of Oxford, the Met Office and four African universities. This partnership aims to help build the capacity of emerging African scientists to become the next leaders in African climate science.

Read the latest article on the Model Evaluation Hub by the Oxford School of Geography and Environment.

The concept of the hub was presented in the following journal article:  James, R., R. Washington, B. Abiodun, G. Kay, J. Mutemi, W. Pokam, N. Hart, G. Artan, and C. Senior, 2018: Evaluating Climate Models with an African Lens. Bull. Amer. Meteor. Soc., 99, 313–336, https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-16-0090.1