How to plan for an uncertain climate future in central and southern Africa - key findings from UMFULA on Malawi and Tanzania
UMFULA’s research offers new insights into how to plan for climate change considering the trade-offs that may exist in development objectives across the water, energy and food sectors. Major decisions about infrastructure require careful planning and assessment of resilience to future climate risks as they involve large investments, long timeframes and irreversibility in a context of climate uncertainty. UMFULA’s work in the Rufiji basin in Tanzania and the Lake Malawi and Shire River basin in Malawi, involving collaboration with decision-makers, highlights how robust decision-making can help identify adaptation options that work well under a range of possible climate futures.
Download UMFULA’s key messages publication here.
Read the Carbon Brief Article featuring this research here.
Guide: Approaches to communicating climatic uncertainties with decision-makers
This guide draws on emerging learning and a research framework developed by the University of East Anglia, together with practical experience and research conducted by AMMA-2050 and FRACTAL. It highlights two approaches used by researchers to communicate climate projections, and associated uncertainties, in west and southern African contexts. It provides descriptions of these approaches, guidance on how best to incorporate them into wider stakeholder engagement processes and contexts, and the constraints and opportunities associated with each approach. The guide also provides general ‘good practice’ guidelines for communicating uncertainty and signposts further resources on the topic for communicators of climate science.
Download the guide here.
Scientific understanding of East African climate change from the HyCRISTAL project
The HyCRISTAL climate change summary brings together HyCRISTAL work to show how the project has: (1) understood uncertainty in global model projections for East Africa and eliminated the wettest projections for the long rains as implausible, (2) generated new understanding of East African climate processes, (3) evaluated climate models for East Africa, (4) generated new understanding of the “East African climate paradox”, showing that drying was due to a shorter rainy season, (5) by using high-resolution runs from IMPALA to show how and why all other global and regional models underestimate changes in extreme rainfall, and cannot capture the response to the changing sea breeze, (6) demonstrated the importance of future remote aerosol emissions for East African climate, and (7) provided new understanding of future changes in onset and cessation of the rainy seasons.
Download the HyCRISTAL climate change summary here.
Future changes and uncertainty in decision-relevant measures of East African climate
Climate information used in decision-making must change from traditional science-driven metrics to decision-driven metrics. A new HyCRISTAL study employs an interdisciplinary consultation process to define and analyse a number of such decision-oriented metrics. These take a holistic approach, addressing the key East African sectors of agriculture, water supply, fisheries, flood management, urban infrastructure and urban health. Multi-model climate projections then provide a repository of user-focused information on climate change and its uncertainties. The paper describes the spatial character and large inter-model uncertainty of changes in temperature and rainfall metrics, as well as for other relevant metrics such as evaporation and solar radiation. Inter-model relationships amongst metrics are also explored, to determine the extent to which model weights could, or could not, be applied across multiple climate metrics.
Download the paper here.
Working paper: An Embedded Researcher approach to integrate climate information into decision-making in southern African cities: lessons from FRACTAL
Building the climate resilience of African cities fits squarely within the category of complex problems that may benefit from taking a transdisciplinary approach to co-producing actionable knowledge between multiple actors and disciplines. Yet one of the key challenges in implementing a transdisciplinary approach is building enough trust, familiarity and understanding across various boundaries to engage in meaningful co-production. FRACTAL employed several strategies to address this challenge, one of which is the establishment of Embedded Researchers (ERs). This FRACTAL Working Paper presents: the rationale for undertaking embedded research; the aims of embedded research within FRACTAL; the ways in which embedded research is being implemented in each of the city contexts; and the lessons learned to-date from implementing the approach in five cities, focussing on the benefits; and the challenges of the approach.
Download the working paper here.
A manual for co-production in African weather and climate services
This manual put together by WISER and FCFA outlines the building blocks and principles for implementing co-production as well as guidance on finding the value in good co-production. The manual is supported by a suite of case studies of co-production drawn from across Africa. These case studies demonstrate how implementing the principles and building blocks play out in practice. Read the FCFA news articles on some of the FCFA co-production case studies on Lusaka, FONERWA, and Malawi.
View the co-production digi-book here.
Evidence of crop production losses in West Africa due to historical global warming in two crop models
A recent study, from AMMA-2050 researchers, found that crop production might have already been affected by human-induced climate change, with significant yield losses estimated in the historical past. The results show that the last simulated decade, 2000-2009, is approximately 1°C warmer in West Africa in the ensemble accounting for human influences on climate, with more frequent heat and rainfall extremes. These altered climate conditions have led to regional average yield reductions of 10-20% for millet and 5-15% for sorghum in the two crop models. The estimates of production losses can be a basis for the loss and damage associated with climate change to date and useful in estimating the costs of the adaptation of crop production systems in the region.
Download the paper here.
FRACTAL Think Pieces: Exploring perspectives that underpin decisions for southern African urban development - Insights from: Harare, Zimbabwe; Lusaka, Zambia and Blantyre, Malawi
The Harare Think Piece outlines issues that emerged during the think tank session as well as pre-think tank discussions captured from city stakeholders and is an important case study for tracing the challenges (and opportunities) faced in water delivery in Zimbabwe and southern Africa as a whole.
The Lusaka Think Piece showcases the preliminary findings of a research process and activity around the values and perceptions of decision-makers on the Kafue Bulk Project. The Blantyre Think Piece presents the findings and results of a stakeholders’ think tank workshop and it features stakeholder level of engagement and participation in the decision-making for the city, as well as their views on the purported waste-to-energy value chain.
Brief: Projecting future water availability in Lake Malawi and the Shire River basin
UMFULA have been investigating how future climate change will affect water resources in Malawi and have developed a water resources model to project future water availability under a changing climate. The findings focus on potential future changes in Lake Malawi water levels and subsequent flows in the Shire River basin. Results indicate a range of potential futures, which illustrates the important role that adaptive decision-making approaches that are robust to uncertainty can play in supporting improved water management and infrastructure development in Malawi.
Download the brief here.
Read the Economist article featuring this research here.
Brief: Designing a process for assessing climate resilience in Tanzania’s Rufiji river basin
This brief introduces the concept of climate information and reasons for its use in major decisions about water, energy and agriculture, including new infrastructure investments. It outlines the innovative approach taken in the Rufiji River basin in Tanzania by UMFULA to assess trade-offs between plans for water use in the energy, agriculture and environment sectors in order to identify adaptation options that are robust and resilient in the face of climate change.
Download the brief here.
‘Eastern African climate Paradox’ rainfall decline due to shorter not less intense Long Rains
Springtime drying trends in East Africa can be explained by shifts in rainfall seasonality and not reductions in daily rainfall. The East African “Long Rains” — which fall during March, April and May — deliver the majority of precipitation to the region. Since the mid-1980s, observations reveal a reduction in rainfall which some climate models fail to capture. Using a suite of observations, reanalyses, and atmospheric simulations, HyCRISTAL researchers led by Caroline Wainwright investigated the mechanisms behind this change. The reduction in Long Rain precipitation is characterised by a later onset and earlier cessation — and thereby a shortening — of the rainy season, attributed to a more rapid movement of the rain band associated with warmer sea surface temperatures off East Africa. Understanding these mechanisms will benefit climate projections and adaptation measures in an already-vulnerable region.
Download the paper here.
|
