This is the sound of West Africa’s changing climate

If you could take a year’s worth of rain gauge readings from a city in Ghana, and transform the information into a musical track, what would it sound like? What would the tune sound like if it the data were to show the rainfall that the same city might expect a century later, based on computer-generated climate projections of a warmer world? A group of scientists and musicians have teamed up to use the process of ‘data sonification’ to do just that, using climate model data from cities in the West African countries of Niger and Ghana to create tracks that demonstrate musically how the climate will shift away from the historic norm within the next century.

East African infrastructure planning must consider both wetter and drier years

April 6, 2021
// Agriculture, Climate research, Water

Kholombidzo is a town on the banks of the Shire River in southern Malawi, and is the site of a proposed hydro-electric scheme that will add between 160 and 370 megawatts of electricity capacity to Malawi’s grid once it is completed. But severe rainfall in the Shire River Basin in 2019 is a telling reminder of how exposed this kind of infrastructure can be to climate risk, and how fluctuations in water flow in a river system between drier and wetter seasons or years can compromise the performance of important water-related infrastructure. A new study by climate researchers with a special interest in East Africa further argues that drought will also have a significant impact on the performance of the proposed Kholombidzo plant and other water-related infrastructure that is planned for the area.

Trust, collaboration and flexibility are key elements in climate research programmes

Between November 2020 and March 2021, Future Climate for Africa (FCFA) hosted a series of events to reflect on key learnings from the FCFA, the Collaborative Adaptation Research Initiative in Africa and Asia (CARIAA), and the Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN) programmes. The series was loosely structured around findings from a recent FCFA learning report entitled “A critical reflection on learning from the FCFA programme” and provided a space to reflect on the past success and challenges from the three programmes while opening a dialogue with the broader community. This helped identify common strengths and key approaches to inform future climate research programmes.

Collaborative research produces refined climate modelling and weather forecasting for Africa

Researchers working with IMPALA are wrapping up a cross-disciplinary, multi-institutional collaboration through which they have developed a model called CP4-Africa. This is a fine-grained climate model which better catches the details of air currents driving rainfall and storm activity, leading to improved representations of total rainfall amounts and, critically, high-impact extreme rain events, than previous models have been capable of. The model zooms in on a tight geographic grid of 4,5km by 4,5km, allowing for much more local-scale information on the timing and intensity of extreme events, particularly rainfall, in long term climate projections. The model has already been applied along with traditional climate model projections in several regions in sub-Saharan Africa. The aim is to produce climate information that will assist policy makers with accessible and useful information that can support governments in making more climate-sensitive planning and decisions. Part of the output from the various regional collaborations in the sub-continent using this model have been to produce a series of climate risk ‘narratives’ which present a few possible future climate scenarios. The narratives then summarise what the implications are in each scenario, along with the likely risks, and offer brief, accessible adaptation options.

How will West Africa’s climate ‘feel’ decades from now?

The paper, published recently in the journal Climate Change by researchers working with AMMA-2050, shows that by the end of the century the average day in West Africa will be well outside of what people experience in today’s climate. This is as the region warms and the monsoon rains are disrupted in response to worsening global atmospheric carbon pollution. The paper visits a number of locations across the region, and gives the likelihood of what a ‘typical’ day will be like at these locations, relative to the present climate. The researchers’ analysis shows that the maximum and minimum temperatures of a typical day will be greater than the 99.5th percentile of the current range, and that these extremes will be particularly noticeable in the spring and summer months.

Watch the recording of this FCFA event: Maximising impact of multi-partner climate research programs

Watch the recording of this rich and interactive discussion on maximising the impact of climate research programmes through effective knowledge management and Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL).

Improving prospects of rainfall projections in Eastern Africa through a convection permitting approach

The first African-led analysis of the highest resolution simulations of African climate change to date (Misiani et al 2020) show an improved simulation of the July-August (known locally as Kiremt in Ethiopia) rainfall of the South Sudan/Ethiopian region, and that global models are likely to underestimate increases in extreme rainfall under climate change. The analysis was performed at ICPAC (IGAD Climate Prediction and Applications Centre), in collaboration with the University of Leeds, as part of the East Meets West add-on to the HyCRISTAL project. The research also found increases in wind speed at low levels in the Turkana Jet, an important feature of regional wind patterns that are already being exploited for renewable electricity.

The need for inclusive, co-produced climate adaptation projects

Development funding earmarked for climate adaptation can be misused in the local context and could worsen the kind of community-level vulnerability that the funding is intended to address, explains Dr Katharine Vincent from Kulima Integrated Development Solutions and an associate professor at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Vincent recently took part in a global study which looks at precisely this: how development funding that is intended to boost adaptation to climate change can have unexpected outcomes, such as reinforcing or creating new forms of vulnerability.

Grappling with risk in a climate-altered future: new Africa-focused book

Climate Risk in Africa: Adaptation and Resilience is an open-access book published in January 2021 by Palgrave Macmillan which draws on the experience of Future Climate For Africa (FCFA). The FCFA work aimed to support African countries by producing useable and appropriately designed climate information in order to further climate-resilient development and planning. FCFA projects focused on improving the availability, accessibility and use of climate information across various contexts. This included urban issues such as water and sanitation, or rural issues such as livelihoods or agriculture, across a range of sub-Saharan African countries.

Webinar Recording: Promoting leadership opportunities for Southern climate researchers

Future Climate For Africa (FCFA) will be hosting a rich and interactive discussion on the barriers and enablers to improving Southern leadership and how these lessons can inform improved design models for future programmes.