Future Climate for Africa (FCFA) aims to generate fundamentally new climate science focused on Africa, and to ensure that this science has an impact on human development across the continent.

Watch the video to learn more about FCFA

LOCATIONS COVERED

FCFA is implemented by 5 international research teams working across the African continent:

AMMA-2050 – Burkina Faso and Senegal.
UMFULA – Malawi and Tanzania.
HyCRISTAL – Kenya and Uganda.
FRACTAL – Botswana, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Zambia.
IMPALA – Pan-Africa

African Climate Risks Conference

Future Climate for Africa hosted the African Climate Risks Conference (ACRC) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in October 2019 under the theme “dismantling the barriers to urgent climate adaptation action.” It brought together over 350 researchers gathering from 52 different countries across the African continent and abroad to discuss the latest research on African climate. It also provided the opportunity for many FCFA researchers to showcase their findings on the latest climate research from the FCFA programme.

LATEST NEWS

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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 99.5% greater than today’s temperatures, and that these extremes will be particularly noticeable in the spring and summer months. The monsoon rains will also become less reliable, according to researchers, which will make planting dates for farmers similarly less predictable.

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.

FEATURED RESOURCES

Climate variability affects water-energy-food infrastructure performance in East Africa

March 15, 2021

The need to assess major infrastructure performance under a changing climate is widely recognized yet rarely practiced, particularly in rapidly growing African economies. Here, we consider high-stakes investments across the water, energy, and food sectors for two major river basins in a climate transition zone in Africa. We integrate detailed interpretation of observed and modeled climate-system behavior with hydrological modeling and decision-relevant performance metrics. For the Rufiji River in Tanzania, projected risks for the mid-21^st century are similar to those of the present day, but for the Lake Malawi-Shire River, future risk exceeds that experienced during the 20^th century. In both basins a repeat of an early-20^th century multi-year drought would challenge the viability of proposed infrastructure. A long view, which emphasizes past and future changes in variability, set within a broader context of climate-information interpretation and decision making, is crucial for screening the risk to infrastructure.

Convection permitting regional climate change simulations for understanding future climate and informing decision making in Africa

February 23, 2021

Pan-Africa convection-permitting regional climate model simulations have been performed to study the impact of high resolution and the explicit representation of atmospheric moist convection on the present and future climate of Africa. These unique simulations have allowed European and African climate scientists to understand the critical role that the representation of convection plays in the ability of a contemporary climate model to capture climate and climate change, including many impact relevant aspects such as rainfall variability and extremes. There are significant improvements in not only the small-scale characteristics of rainfall such as its intensity and diurnal cycle, but also in the large-scale circulation. Similarly effects of explicit convection affect not only projected changes in rainfall extremes, dry-spells and high winds, but also continental-scale circulation and regional rainfall accumulations. The physics underlying such differences are in many cases expected to be relevant to all models that use parameterized convection. In some cases physical understanding of small-scale change mean that we can provide regional decision makers with new scales of information across a range of sectors. We demonstrate the potential value of these simulations both as scientific tools to increase climate process understanding and, when used with other models, for direct user applications. We describe how these ground-breaking simulations have been achieved under the UK Government’s Future Climate for Africa Programme. We anticipate a growing number of such simulations, which we advocate should become a routine component of climate projection, and encourage international co-ordination of such computationally, and human-resource expensive simulations as effectively as possible.

Technical Brief: Climate change impacts – implications for policy and practice in Tanzania’s Rufiji River Basin

February 17, 2021

This brief synthesises the results of undertaking a climate risk analysis for the Rufiji River Basin, Tanzania. The basin supports extensive socio-economic and environmental services and is targeted for major development via hydropower infrastructure and investment through the Southern Agricultural Growth Corridor of Tanzania. The implications of climate risk for development objectives that cut across the water-energy-food-environment sectors are outlined and recommendations proposed to help achieve climate resilient sustainable development.

The brief is for practitioners and technical policy-makers with a detailed interest in understanding development processes and the impacts of climate change in the Rufiji River Basin. The approach is relevant for other large river basins undergoing rapid development.

Climate services in Africa: Re-imagining an inclusive, robust and sustainable service

February 12, 2021

Africa is one of the most vulnerable continents to climate change because of its heightened sensitivity to climate variability and inadequate institutional adaptive capacity. Notwithstanding these challenges, Africa, and its inhabitants, have been confronting the vagaries of climate for centuries, including severe droughts and floods. Given this context, this paper provides a commentary on the efforts to ensure and enable climate services on the continent as well as a critical, reflexive assessment of activities in this varied landscape. A special focus on the institutional frameworks and the underlying knowledge systems that support and interface with climate services will be examined. A central question underpinning the paper is: to what extent is the expanding landscape of climate services being endogenously driven in Africa? Finally, some recommendations for future efforts to enhance effective institutions and knowledge brokering and facilitate better climate services in Africa are suggested.

In-situ fluorescence spectroscopy indicates total bacterial abundance and dissolved organic carbon

February 11, 2021

We explore in-situ fluorescence spectroscopy as an instantaneous indicator of total bacterial abundance and faecal contamination in drinking water. Eighty-four samples were collected outside of the recharge season from groundwater-derived water sources in Dakar, Senegal. Samples were analysed for tryptophan-like (TLF) and humic-like (HLF) fluorescence in-situ, total bacterial cells by flow cytometry, and potential indicators of faecal contamination such as thermotolerant coliforms (TTCs), nitrate, and in a subset of 22 samples, dissolved organic carbon (DOC). Significant single-predictor linear regression models demonstrated that total bacterial cells were the most effective predictor of TLF, followed by on-site sanitation density; TTCs were not a significant predictor. An optimum multiple-predictor model of TLF incorporated total bacterial cells, nitrate, nitrite, on-site sanitation density, and sulphate (r² 0.68). HLF was similarly related to the same parameters as TLF, with total bacterial cells being the best correlated (ρ_s 0.64). In the subset of 22 sources, DOC clustered with TLF, HLF, and total bacterial cells, and a linear regression model demonstrated HLF was the best predictor of DOC (r² 0.84). The intergranular nature of the aquifer, timing of the study, and/or non-uniqueness of the signal to TTCs can explain the significant associations between TLF/HLF and indicators of faecal contamination such as on-site sanitation density and nutrients but not TTCs. The bacterial population that relates to TLF/HLF is likely to be a subsurface community that develops in-situ based on the availability of organic matter originating from faecal sources. In-situ fluorescence spectroscopy instantly indicates a drinking water source is impacted by faecal contamination but it remains unclear how that relates specifically to microbial risk in this setting.

Tryptophan-like and humic-like fluorophores are extracellular in groundwater: implications as real-time faecal indicators

February 11, 2021

Fluorescent natural organic matter at tryptophan-like (TLF) and humic-like fluorescence (HLF) peaks is associated with the presence and enumeration of faecal indicator bacteria in groundwater. We hypothesise, however, that it is predominantly extracellular material that fluoresces at these wavelengths, not bacterial cells. We quantified total (unfiltered) and extracellular (filtered at < 0.22 µm) TLF and HLF in 140 groundwater sources across a range of urban population densities in Kenya, Malawi, Senegal, and Uganda. Where changes in fluorescence occurred following filtration they were correlated with potential controlling variables. A significant reduction in TLF following filtration (ΔTLF) was observed across the entire dataset, although the majority of the signal remained and thus considered extracellular (median 96.9%). ΔTLF was only significant in more urbanised study areas where TLF was greatest. Beneath Dakar, Senegal, ΔTLF was significantly correlated to total bacterial cells (ρ_s 0.51). No significant change in HLF following filtration across all data indicates these fluorophores are extracellular. Our results suggest that TLF and HLF are more mobile than faecal indicator bacteria and larger pathogens in groundwater, as the predominantly extracellular fluorophores are less prone to straining. Consequently, TLF/HLF are more precautionary indicators of microbial risks than faecal indicator bacteria in groundwater-derived drinking water.