AMARANTH – A paradigm of African resiliency to climate and weather extremes built through a multidisciplinary network and enhanced research capacity
Dr. Tiziana Paccagnella
ARPA ER-SIMC
Insert List of Partners and Associates
Partner 1. Senegal Meteorological Agency : ANAMS
Partner 2. Igad Climate Predictions And Applications Centre:ICPAC - Kenya
Partner 3. African Centre for Meteorological Applications for Development :ACMAD Niger
Partner 4. Cameroon National meteorological Service:NMS
Partner 5 South African Weather Service[1]:: SAWS
Partner 6 Direction de la Météorologie Burkina Faso: METEOBURKINA
Partner 7 National meteorological Service of Guinea: METEOGUINEA
Partner 8 National Institute of Meteorology and Geophysics of Capeverde: INMG
Partner 9 Department of Water Resources of GAMBIA :DWR
Partner 10 National Meteorology Directorate of MALI : METEOMALI
Partner 11 World Meteorological Organization WMO
Partner 12 International Centre for Theoretical Physics ICTP Italy
Partner 13 Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile e Ambientale, Università degli Studi di Firenze DICEA- UNIFI - Italy
Partner 14. Zentralanstalt fur Meteorologie und Geodynamic ZAMG - Austria
Partner 15 Niger river Basin Authority NBA
Associate 1 Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research (CAWCR), Bureau of Meteorology BOM Australia
Associate 2 National Center for Atmospheric Research NCAR USA
Associate 3 National Center for Environmental Prediction NCEP USA
13 March 2009
Proposal for 9th European Development Fund
Europe/Aid/127860/D/ACT/ACP
PART A: CONCEPT NOTE
1. Title of the Action
AMARANTH – A paradigm of African resiliency to climate and weather extremes built through a multidisciplinary network and enhanced research capacity
2. Relevance of the Action
Over the past several decades, many developed nations have experienced dramatic improvements in their technological capacity to predict weather events, seasonal variations and even climate change. However, the slow steady increase in forecast skill, even for these developed nations, is often not sufficient to meet the enhanced demand for more accurate prediction and better use of forecast information due to population growth, climate change and demographic changes that increase the susceptibility of society to natural disasters by concentrating populations into urban areas, along coasts and within river valleys. In Africa, the situation is dire. The poverty in Africa, with more than 30 of the world’s 49 least developed countries, makes the continent particularly vulnerable to climate extremes and other high impact weather events[2]. Population growth remains high in Africa, particularly in Sub-Saharan countries, and the urbanization rates of the continent are among the highest in the world. For example, in 1975 about 25% of Africans were living in urban areas with some projections suggesting that more than 50% of urban Africans could be living in slums and informal settlements by 2025.
The impact of climate change and high impact weather events hinders sustained development in African sectors such as agriculture, energy, water management, transportation, fisheries, and health. Numerous examples of the impacts of such events on development can be quoted. For example, the Word Bank (2001) reported a 6% reduction in Mozambique annual growth rate and significant damages in neighbouring countries with the 2000 floods. Agriculture is also extremely important in Africa as it constitutes ~30% of Africa's GDP, contributes about 50% of the total export value and 70% of the continent's population depend on the sector for their livelihood. Such agriculture is vulnerable to high impact events in Africa with production subsistent in nature with a high dependence on rainfall. The response to high impact events is all too often only through relief programmes providing temporary shock absorbers for the poor. The International Federation for Red Cross and Crescent Societies (IFRC), other relief organizations, and government emergency services provide life-saving assistance for response and recovery after heavy rains and floods (e.g., www.ifrc.org/docs/appeals/07/mdr61002bf.pdf; and www.ifrc.org/docs/news/pr07/3907.asp) seeking emergency funding of millions of Euros per year for response and recovery in Africa. Increasing prevention and preparedness actions based on better weather advisories and warning will reduce losses and damages as well as response and recovery costs. The creation of these multidisciplinary networks, information systems for future research, and demonstration of new technology will allow efficient directing of funding towards efforts aimed at mitigating the scale and depth of future high impact events reducing the need for aid in the long-term.
The sensitivity of African development to high impact weather events is dire, but maximizing improvements and developing long-term strategies is complex and difficult. Successful strategies will certainly require multidisciplinary partnerships between research, operational forecasters, end-users and those involved in communication of forecast information. For example, evaluation of numerical weather predictions over Africa by researchers and users is needed as such systems have relatively large errors over Africa and the observational system is also relatively poor making it difficult to assess and improve forecasts. Dissemination and communication of forecast information to end-user are also relatively difficult. Africa also lacks some of the technological resources available in developed nations. For example, there are no Limited Area Modelling Ensemble Prediction Systems (LAM EPS) to downscale the predictions from coarser gird global global models to better meet society’s needs, while also creating probabilistic information on the likelihood of high impact events. The combination of such shortcomings means that when a disaster occurs in Africa, it is difficult to even determine the weakest links in the chain of forecasting and disseminating information (e.g., a poor forecast by the numerical prediction system, inadequate forecast lead time relative to the magnitude event, a lack of access of African nations to state-of-art forecast systems, improper interpretation of an accurate forecast, shortcomings in communication of the forecast, or a poor response to accurate and timely information by end users and the public).
The goals of this proposal are to create three major actions under this call that, in the long-term, will reduce the vulnerability of Africa to weather and climate variations. The beneficiaries include:
- Vulnerable poor living in urban slums prone to flash floods, flood plains and river basins who will better protect their lives and properties with advisories and warnings;
- National emergency services, representatives of IFRC and other relief organizations who will improve planning and operations making response and recovery more efficient and less costly;
- Sub-regional economic groupings (ECOWAS, ECCAS, SADC, IGAD) will better coordinate emergencies of sub-regional scale.
- Scientists in developing research capacity of Africa benefiting from an improved network and improved capacities.
- Climate, weather and hydrology agencies and their partners in Africa that will see the visibility of their work increased in Africa and in the eyes of the international community.
3. Description of the Action and its effectiveness
The proposal follows the general outline of activities of the THORPEX Programme of the World Weather Research Programme of the World Meteorological Organization. The goals of THORPEX are to accelerate predictive skill and improve utilization of forecast information for high impact weather events on the 1 to 14-day time scale for the benefit of society, the economy and the environment. Regional committees implement THORPEX through identifying scientific issues associated with their region and then develop strategies to address those issues. This proposal relies heavily on the Africa Science and Implementation Plans[3] produced by the African THORPEX Regional Committee composed of the leading researchers in Africa. Many of the aspects here are described in Kaamga Foamouhouse et al (2009). The THORPEX Science Plan is summarized in Shapiro and Thorpe (2004). The proposal has three actions.
The First Action is to create an African High Impact Weather Information System. The creation of this information system is a major effort that will continue through the three years of this proposal under the leadership of ACMAD, Senegal Meteorological Agency, WMO-THORPEX Africa and the Joint UNESCO/IAEA/Italian Government International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ITCP). This action will begin with a kick off meeting (approximately one week) to obtain a consensus on the path forward to develop this system and to engage a relevant multi-disciplinary community. The database will contain an archive of i) past weather events with high impacts on diverse sectors in Africa, ii) a summary of the economic, environmental and societal impacts of these events and iii) a measure of their predictive skill in available global ensemble, global deterministic and regional deterministic numerical prediction models. Additional simulations with regional deterministic models may be undertaken for high priority cases. The information system will rely heavily on available disaster data-bases to identify events, but delve into deeper into impacts and also include predictability information. The information system will also include those frequent types of events with large cumulative impacts even if those events do not qualify as disasters. To facilitate the development of this plan the fifty-six African Members of the World Meteorological Organization will be contacted and asked to name points of contact that will work with users to identify important events. A subset of these contact points will be invited along with a network of research experts to this kick off meeting at ITCP in Trieste, Italy.
Due to the importance of flooding, this Action will also include a supplement to the Information System that identifies risks by summarizing river basins and the most vulnerable urban features with data for each of the basins and cities that experienced heavy rains and flooding with high impacts over the past two decades. The WMO and UNESCO hydrological programmes, the Network of African river Basin Organizations (NABO) and National geographical and Meteorological institutes will prepare and produce these summary reports on vulnerable cities and basins properties. For the flooding studies, we anticipate that the focus will include the Nile, Congo, Niger, and Zambezi Rivers and Lake Chad, which are shared by eight or more countries each. A strengthened network of emergency management services, river basin organizations and hydro-meteorological services sharing a data-base and better skills/tools for heavy rain and floods monitoring is the expected result of this action.
The Second Action will be a Forecast Demonstration Project (FDP) in Year 3. The FDP will be a focal point bringing together scientists working on operational atmospheric and hydrological prediction in Europe, America, and Africa, the African research community, end-users in various sectors and decision makers, such as emergency planners. The FDP will transfer expertise from Europe and other international partners to Africa as well as transfer techniques from the leading centres in Africa to those with more limited capabilities. The FDP will be patterned after similar WMO projects such as the SWFDP (Severe Weather FDP) in Southern Africa and the MAP D-PHASE project in the EU Alpine regions. The FDP will have a multi-scale and multi-disciplinary approach. To extend warnings, the FDP will employ output from TIGGE-GIFS (THORPEX Interactive Grand Global Ensemble-Global Interactive Forecast System) products. TIGGE is a unique cooperation between the ten leading global ensemble forecast centres across Europe, Asian and the Americas creating an archive of all the ensemble members of the ten ensemble systems linking ~256 numerical weather prediction forecasts per day. Early research suggests that TIGGE-GIFS could add 1 to 3 days of increased lead-time to heavy rainfall forecasts[4] in the 3 to 10-day range. Special real-time TIGGE-GIFS products will need to be defined and produced by centres, such as the ECMWF, NCEP, UK Met Office, DWD and Meteo France, such as was done recently for tropical cyclone track forecasts. For example, the SWFDP has shown the need for products related to heavy rainfall. These products will be developed in years 1 and 2 of this proposal. For the FDP, we would ask that these products from the deterministic models at the highest possible resolution also be made available. TIGGE-GIFS will also be used for prediction component of the African Information System where real-time access is not necessary.
In contrast to the medium-time range of the global TIGGE-GIFS system, the limited area (e.g. regional) models will be more effective for 1 to 3-days of lead-time providing details of the impacts of the event. A unique aspect of this proposal will be the introduction of ensemble-based Limited Area Modelling Systems to Africa through a parallel effort called TIGGE LAM. Africa will be the first demonstration project for TIGGE LAM anywhere in the world! In order to make this concept a reality, the deterministic models will need to be tested for Africa early in the proposal with the LAMs ensembles tested in Year 2 for participation in the Demonstration Project in the Year 3. Austria/ZAMG and Italy/ARPA will provide the LAM EPS systems for this TIGGE LAM concept over Africa. These two partners cover the three EU regional modelling consortium (ALADIN/LACE, COSMO and HIRLAM LAEF). Italy/ARPA and Austria/ZMAG will also make deterministic models simulations for Africa available along with several operational deterministic LAMs run for Africa that have been deployed by other European countries. and the US to be run, where possible, on common grids to facilitate research efforts aimed at improving current deterministic LAM capability for Africa.
The FDP will go beyond the prediction of atmospheric events by the numerical weather prediction systems to use the statistical hydrological models of African hydrological services to provide discharges at and above the flood level for each station in the basins. These models will allow further information on how these events will impact society. Statistical models have inherent limitations and thus this proposal will aim to implement one or more dynamical hydrological models in the network of centres. African river networks are generally natural, in strong contrast to the engineered and often canalized European waterways, posing unique problems for dynamical discharge models used operationally in Europe. UNESCO-ICTP intend to support this aim by providing the CHYM discharge model, which has been developed and tested for the Niger and Volta basins, and will be implemented in Ghana, Cameroon and Ethiopia under an existing project in the near-future. Further expertise and support will be sought from European hydrological centres. The result of this action is a more active network of hydrological centres using meteorological centres inputs and providing flood warning and advisories. Thus, this FDP will create a data-base of long value not only for research and operational practice on atmospheric models, but for hydrological modelling. The improved linkage between these two communities will help create a critical mass to work on this problem. The FDP conducted under the World Weather Research Programme for alpine flooding in Europe called MAP D-PHASE shows the benefit to users of creating a coordinated approach between disciplines and across the time-scales of prediction.