ClimAfrica – Climate change predictions in Sub-Saharan Africa: impacts and adaptations
ClimAfrica is an international project funded by European Commission under the 7th Framework Programme (FP7) which comprises 18 institutions: 9 from Europe, 8 from Africa, and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). African partners are from: Burkina Faso, Congo, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, South Africa, Sudan and Togo. ClimAfrica is coordinated by the Euro-Mediterranean Centre for Climate Change (CMCC), Italy
ClimAfrica’s main objective is to better understand and predict climate change in SSA for the next 10-20 years, analysing the expected impacts on ecosystems and population and developing 16- IGAD Centre for Climate Prediction and adaptation strategies tailored to the African context. Please consult the official ClimAfrica project page for full details about the project and it’s components: www.climafrica.net
The role of CSAG in this project is to provide downscaled seasonal and decadal forecast data in three sub-Saharan regions, namely West Africa (including 2 sub-regions), Eastern and Southern Africa. Seasonal forecasts developed by Working Group 1 will be downscaled using two methods at CSAG (part of WG 2) for use by Working Groups 3, 4 and 6.
Two downscaling methods will be used, one dynamical downscaling and the other statistical. The former uses a numerical model (WRF) that simulates the processes of the atmosphere in the selected region based on the large scale information provided to it by the large scale, global model. The latter develops statistical relationships between the stations on the ground and the large scale atmospheric circulation to produce station scale downscaled results which may be interpolated to a grid if required. The objective is to downscale these regions to 25km.
For more information please contact Chris Lennard at lennard@csag.uct.ac.za.