A pan-African convection-permitting regional climate simulation with the Met Office Unified Model: CP4-Africa
The paper reports initial results from the first five years of convection permitting multiyear regional climate simulation using the CP4-Africa over Africa-wide domain, pioneered by the IMPALA project. It provides new insights on climate processes and change over Africa by demonstrating improvements in the ability to replicate observations over Africa, with substantial improvements in seasonal average rainfall. A reduction in the persistent underestimation of rainfall in West Africa is shown. Temporal characteristics of rainfall are better simulated as well, with better representation of the diurnal cycle of convective precipitation over land. Stratton et al. 2018.
Policy coherence for sustainable development in sub-Saharan Africa
For many countries realising policy coherence is challenging. Cross-sectoral approaches to policy development are essential to meeting the Paris Agreement on climate change and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which define the post-2015 development agenda. Coherent policy development requires strategic, logical assessment of interlinkages, trade-offs and opportunities within and across sectors and over spatial and temporal scales. This brief makes recommendations on improving coherence for national governments, sectoral ministries, donors, and non-governmental organisations.
Understanding the causes of uncertainty in projections of tropical terrestrial rainfall change over East Africa
Understanding why different climate models produce different projections of future regional climate change is critical for the evaluation of the reliability of their projections. This study, published in the Journal of Climate by HyCRISTAL’s Dave Rowell and Robin Chadwick, investigates the causes of projection spread across CMIP5 models for seasonal mean rainfall change over East Africa (also featured in Climate Home News).
Modelling the precipitation response over southern Africa to the 2009-2010 El Nino
The 2009–2010 El Niño event was expected to lead to a substantial drought over southern Africa during austral summer. However, many parts of the region experienced average to well above average rainfall during this season. Given that seasonal forecasting skill tends only to be good during ENSO seasons and many parts of the sub-continent rely on rain-fed agriculture, understanding why the rainfall was so anomalous during this El Niño event is important and investigated in this paper. |
|
Blogs
Closing the gap between climate knowledge and decision making
The FRACTAL project is contextualising climate information through the development of climate risk narratives; visions of the future of cities under pressure from the complex web of climate and non-climate stressors. The most important feature of these narratives is that they are iterated in an ongoing dialogue as multiple groups of stakeholders contribute their own knowledge to create a story that integrates contextual values and perspectives. Read more on the process.
Leadership for a changing world - principles for transformational leadership on climate change
At a recent FRACTAL-led training session in Windhoek, select decision-makers and councillors co-produced a set of principles for transformational leadership on climate change. Jess Kavonic, a FRACTAL researcher based at ICLEI Africa described this style of leadership, saying: “A transformational leader is one that challenges the dynamics that created the problem in the first place, as well as builds capacities to be able to deal with and support the change the leader and situation is asking for.” Read more on the principles for transformational leadership.
East Africa's cities need to plan for increased flooding due to climate change now
Flooding in Africa will be more severe as the climate changes. We need plans, policies and infrastructure for our cities as a matter of urgency. This blog by Zablone Owiti (SouthSouthNorth) explores the latest extreme rainfall-related flooding in east Africa’s cities and how the research by HyCRISTAL will inform the development of coping options to reduce the impact of future extreme weather events in urban areas. This blog is also featured on Climate Home News.
Why we need to start seriously considering the risk of extreme heat in African cities
Heatwaves are predictable so there is time to react and save lives, but good planning and coordination amongst actors is vital to ensure this happens. More people need to recognise the dangers of heat on human health and act to set up the systems to prevent heat related deaths argues Suzanne Carter, following findings in the IPCC Special Report on 1.5℃. Read her blog here.
Webinars
FCFA micro e-learning course on reviewing IPCC Assessment Reports
FCFA hosted three webinars for prospective reviewers of IPCC Assessment Reports that together formed a "micro" e-learning course. The three sessions were presented by Prof. Jean-Pascal, Dr Leo Meyer, Prof. Arthur Petersen, and Prof. Yacob Mulugetta. The r ecordings can be accessed here:
- An introduction to how the IPCC works (it’s functions, governance and achievements), an introduction to an IPCC-style scientific assessment, its relation to policy and upcoming events
- IPCC review processes, including instructions for reviewers, the effectiveness of comments, and reviewing texts and graphs
- In-depth review analysis and guidance, including claimed robustness and uncertainties of IPCC statements and specific issues for Africa
Policy coherence for sustainable development in southern Africa
Cross-sectoral approaches to policy development are essential to meeting the Paris Agreement on climate change and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which define the post-2015 development agenda. In this webinar, we share new analysis of differing degrees of policy coherence to achieve sustainable development in the water, energy and food (agriculture) sectors. Findings and recommendations are illustrated with case studies of policy coherence for Tanzania, and Malawi, and local experience from Zambia.
Communicating climate information and uncertainties better
Researchers, national meteorological agencies and civil society face many challenges when trying to communicate climate information and uncertainty to decision-makers. This webinar shares practical recommendations and a few approaches to generating and communicating climate change information. It draws on insights from cognitive psychology, and FCFA experiences from communicating changes in the west African monsoon (visualising data and probabilistic information) and integrating climate knowledge with urban decision-makers in Lusaka, Windhoek and Maputo (through climate impact narratives).
|
|
Recent publications by FCFA authors
|
|
|
Sabiiti, G., Ininda, J.M., Ogallo, L.A., Ouma, J., Artan, G., Basalirwa, C., Opijah, F., Nimusiima, A., Ddumba, S.D., Mwesigwa, J.B. and Otieno, G. (2018). Adapting Agriculture to Climate Change: Suitability of Banana Crop Production to Future Climate Change Over Uganda. In Limits to Climate Change Adaptation (pp. 175-190). Springer, Cham.
Rowell, D., and Chadwick, R. (2018). Causes of the uncertainty in projections of tropical terrestrial rainfall change: East Africa. American Meterological Society.
Howard, E., and Washington, R. (2018). Characterizing the Synoptic Expression of the Angola Low. American Meteorological Society.
Pinto, I., Jack, C., and Hewitson, B. (2018). Process‐based model evaluation and projections over southern Africa from Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment and Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 models. Int. J. Climatol. https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.5666.
Lazenby, M., Todd, M., Chadwick, R., and Wang, Y. (2018). Future precipitation projections over central and southern Africa and the adjacent Indian Ocean: What causes the changes and the uncertainty?. Journal of Climate.
Jones, A. C., Hawcroft, M. K., Haywood, J. M., Jones, A., Guo, X., and Moore, J. C. (2018). Regional Climate Impacts of Stabilizing Global Warming at 1.5 K Using Solar Geoengineering. Earth’s Future, 6, 230–251.
Blanchet, J., Aly, C., Vischel, T., Panthou, G., Sané, Y. and Diop Kane, M. (2018). Trend in the Co-Occurrence of Extreme Daily Rainfall in West Africa Since 1950. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres.
Hawcroft, M., Haywood, J., Collins, M., and Jones, A. (2018). The contrasting climate response to tropical and extratropical energy perturbations. Climate Dynamics. 19pp.
Stratton, R., Senior, C., Vosper, S., Folwell, S., Boutle, I., Earnshaw, P., Kendon, E., Lock, A., Malcolm, A., Manners, J., Morcrette, C., Short, C., Stirling, A., Taylor, C., Tucker, S., Webster, S. and Wilkinson, J. (2018). A Pan-African Convection-Permitting Regional Climate Simulation with the Met Office Unified Model: CP4-Africa. Journal of Climate, 31(9), pp.3485-3508.
Siderius, C., Gannon, K. E., Ndiyoi, M., Opere, A., Batisani, N., Olago, D., Pardoe, J., and Conway, D. (2018). Hydrological Response and Complex Impact Pathways of the 2015/2016 El Nino in Eastern and Southern Africa. Earth’s Future, 6, 2–22, https://doi.org/10.1002/2017EF000680.
A full list of recent publications is available for download.
|
|
|
|
