Cooperation that goes beyond just shaking hands

After two days of internal meetings, they held an external workshop for EC officials and other stakeholders to convey key findings and experiences. The Climate Services for Africa science policy workshop at Norway House in the European Quarter in Brussels featured presentations of selected main outcomes of the projects, as well as strategic discussions on issues, such as infrastructure limitations, enhancing sustainability of climate services and enhancing co-production.

Dissemination should be a priority

Philippe Tulkens, Head of Unit ‘Climate and Planetary Boundaries’ in the Research and Innovation Directorate General of the European Commission, applauded the cooperation:

– This is a real case of good international cooperation that is goes beyond just shaking hands.

Tulkens stressed the significance of implementing good dissemination plans to ensure that the knowledge produced is properly transmitted and understood by the relevant actors. In addition to top level politicians, relevant users can be authorities at local or regional levels, the private sector and other stakeholders that are key for climate adaptation.

– We need to equip Africa with all the tools that science can provide; better models, better data, better climate services. Reliable timely information is crucial for helping people to make the difficult decisions that could save their lives, Tulkens said.

End-user focus

PI of the CONFER project, Dr. Erik Kolstad (NORCE), emphasized the importance of data to better understand climate change and its impact; to develop appropriate policy responses and to create dedicated climate services - this means climate services that are actually tailored to the African context. The CONFER project has emphasized co-development of climate services for water energy and food security with a very strong focus on co-production.

– Unless you engage the people who will be using the services you might as well do something else, because it will have no value. The tools and applications developed must demonstrate clear end-user engagement and this is extremely key. We have had a strong focus on co-production and some of our team members have served as glue between the scientists and the and the people who will use these products.

The project has worked on developing river stream flow forecasts which in the long term will be used for early warnings and flood forecasting in the whole region in East Africa:

– It is extremely important to have developed this at ICPAC, the regional climate center, because they can serve countries like Sudan and South Sudan who are currently in a conflict on a war, and don't have the ability or the resources to handle these issues, Kolstad concluded.

Dr. Kolstad also highlighted how machine learning models have been used to develop a prototype for a crop yield forecast focusing on Kenya, with a plan to scale this up to the whole region. CONFER has also improved predictions of when the rainy season starts. This work also involved engaging with local stakeholders and farmers who need to know when the rainy season actually starts, not just when the first day of rain happens.

Open-source impact based modelling system

The DOWN2EARTH project works in the same region as CONFER, focusing on Ethiopia, Somalia and Kenya, and specifically the dry regions of those countries. The PI, Prof. Michael Singer (Cardiff University), explained how a new open-source impact-based modeling system has been developed. The system simulates climate impacts on hydrology and vegetation from seasonal forecasts and projections.

– We saw the need to translate climate information into something more usable in the form of water related forecasts or vegetation related forecasts that can support actual decision making on the ground within rural communities, through county level governments, but also at regional levels in terms of humanitarian aid provision and even national level planning, he further explains.

The modeling framework has now been installed and set up and at ICPAC, the regional climate services organization, where the staff have been trained in order to understand how to use the model to generate impact-based forecasts that are consistent with their climate forecasts and this will now become operational for the upcoming October- December rainy season.

– In order to model what happens to rainfall when it hits the ground in a dry land environment you really have to capture the important processes that occur in dryland hydrology. The model represents the full water balance from rainfall that's delivered to the land surface, its movement over the land, its infiltration into the ground, its recharge of water tables of the groundwater aquifers and the other interactions between the groundwater aquifer and stream flow regimes.

The project has also funded several capacity building activities, including training journalists and rural communities, and developed Open Access training materials, such as a Somali language MOOC. New automatic weather stations have been installed in Somalia to bridge major data gaps and support the creation of a new Somali met service.

Full value chain of climate services

In FOCUS-Africa the researchers are looking at the full value chain of climate services, starting with data and developing it into products to end-users. The project also includes an assessment of the socioeconomic benefit of these products. Their focus has been in the SADC-countries in Southern Africa, specifically in Tanzania, Mozambique, Mauritius, Malawi and South Africa.

Dr. Roberta Boscolo (World Meteorological Organization), the PI of the FOCUS Africa project has found the cooperation between the three projects very valuable:

– We tried to synergize as much as possible in these four years of the project implementation. We had a joint event at COP27 in the European Commission pavilion to showcase the three projects, a podcast that was jointly produced as well as series of joint webinars.

FOCUS-Africa identified eight case studies in the energy, food security, water and infrastructure sectors of the region. These case studies provided a range of examples where climate service delivery can be successfully implemented.

– I would especially highlight the broad engagement of users from public sector to private sector. We experienced a lot of engagement with the stakeholders across the value chain of climate services. Where possible, we also tried to have a holistic view of the climate services, looking at nexus among water, energy and agriculture. The result of our project really shows that the climate services provide benefits on the ground, and we can quantify these benefits as well.

World Café

The event ended with a session of World Café where the invited stakeholders were asked to engage in structured discussions with identified moderators. Dr. Lucy Mtilatila, Director of the Department of Climate Change and Meteorological Services in Malawi, led the group discussing joint research needs. Dr. Hanan Rabbah, Director General of the Sudan Meteorological Authority, chaired the discussion on infrastructure limitations, and Dr. Katarzyna Drabicka, Team Leader - Climate Team on both Mitigation and Adaptation Work Streams, Climate & Planetary Boundaries Unit, DG for Research and Innovation led the discussions on how to realize a strategic long-term vision.

The outcomes of these discussions will be collected in a white paper that will be distributed to EC relevant bodies.