London and Cape Town: A new UK government-funded initiative will put GBP20 million (USD30 million) behind leading-edge research to better understand Africa’s changing climate and the use of climate change information in decision-making across the continent.

Africa’s climate is one of the least-researched and poorly understood in the world, but looks set to change significantly in the decades ahead. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concluded that temperatures could warm up to 6oC on the continent this century, and vast areas could experience more intense drought or rainfall than known before.

Governments and the private sector currently plough USD 70 billion into infrastructure investments in Africa each year. There are major questions over whether these investments will be resilient to the climate of the future.

Future Climate for Africa (FCFA) is supporting five major research projects to develop better climate information for Africa and to test how the new information could be used in decision-making. FCFA is a joint programme of the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) and Natural Environment Research Council.

Dr Tim Wheeler, DFID’s Deputy Chief Scientific Adviser, said: “We know that climate change will alter significantly the risks faced by African societies over the coming decades. That’s why DFID is delighted to work with the UK Natural Environment Research Council to address this challenge through jointly funding the Future Climate for Africa (FCFA) programme. FCFA will not only improve the climate information available to African decision-makers, but it also aims to work with both scientists and stakeholders across the continent to ensure that information is better tailored to users’ needs and to strengthen the skills of users in the interpretation and use of climate information. The programme will also make a significant contribution to training African climate scientists. That way, African researchers can support decision-makers as they invest in infrastructure and development programmes in Africa in the future.”

NERC Chief Executive Duncan Wingham said: “Supporting science that helps society manage the effects of environmental change is one of NERC’s key strategic objectives. We are delighted to be investing in Future Climate for Africa, which will provide African governments, business and other stakeholders with the information they need to make decisions that increase resilience and reduce climate risk.”

“African societies are already affected by climate change including sustained droughts, deadly floods and rising sea levels, which entrench poverty and undermine economic growth,” said Stefan Raubenheimer, Director of FCFA’s Coordination, Capacity Development and Knowledge Exchange unit. “The Future Climate for Africa programme will provide high quality climate information to help governments and businesses make more climate-resilient investments. The programme will safeguard economic development and contribute to the fight against poverty in the long term.”

“FCFA will empower tens of thousands of scientists and policy-makers through knowledge and decision-making support tools available on open platforms, with potential benefit for millions of people whose lives will ultimately be affected,” he added.

For example, health, education and social support systems, finance for households and businesses and local planning decisions all have the potential to be ‘climate-proofed’ so they function well in future climate conditions. FCFA focuses on the uses of climate information relevant to the medium term (over the next 5-40 years) as this is the lifespan of many development projects being designed today.

FCFA has awarded major grants to the following research projects:

• AMMA-2050 (African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analysis 2050) AMMA-2050 will improve understanding of how the West African monsoon will be affected by climate change in the coming decades – and help West African societies prepare and adapt.
• FRACTAL (Future Resilience for African Cities and Lands) FRACTAL will improve scientific knowledge of future climate trends in Southern Africa, deepen urban policy-makers’ understanding of how climate change will affect water and energy services, and support them to explore climate-resilient development choices.
• HyCRISTAL (Integrating Hydro-Climate Science into Policy Decisions for Climate-Resilient Infrastructure and Livelihoods in East Africa) HyCRISTAL will develop new understanding of climate change and its impacts in East Africa, working with the region’s decision-makers to manage water for a more climate-resilient future.
• IMPALA ( Improving Model Processes for African Climate) IMPALA research will improve understanding of African climate processes and the mechanisms of future change – leading to a step change in global climate model prediction capability for Africa.
• UMFULA (Uncertainty reduction in Models for Understanding Development Applications) UMFULA will provide new insights and more reliable information about climate processes and extremes in Central and Southern Africa. UMFULA will partner with agencies and universities in Tanzania and Malawi to link the information to development decisions with long-term consequences.

FCFA’s Coordination, Capacity Development and Knowledge Exchange unit is based with the Climate and Development Knowledge Network (www.cdkn.org) in Cape Town, South Africa. This team will lead outreach on the research programme’s results, making sure that its findings are communicated widely across the region.

Representatives of the FCFA research consortia will be speaking about their initiatives on 28th October at the Africa, Climate Change and Sustainable Development Conference in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe http://www.climdev-africa.org/ccda5 The FCFA session runs from 17:30-19:00 local time and speaker lists and affiliations will be updated online.

For full descriptions of the research awards, visit: www.futureclimateafrica.org

Follow us on twitter: @future_climate

Contact:

Claire Mathieson and Jean-Pierre Roux, FCFA Coordination, Capacity Development and Knowledge Exchange - South Africa: +27 (0) 21 447 0211 claire.mathieson@cdkn.org and jp@cdkn.org

The AMMA-2050 consortium is led by Dr Chris Taylor, Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, UK. For more information or to arrange an interview, please contact Dr Barnaby Smith, Media Relations Manager, +44 (0) 7920 295384 or email bpgs@ceh.ac.uk

The FRACTAL consortium is led by Dr Bruce Hewitson, University of Cape Town, South Africa. For more information, please contact Claire Mathieson (above).

The HyCRISTAL consortium is led by Dr John Marsham, University of Leeds, UK. For more information or to arrange an interview, please contact Rebecca Slack, HyCRISTAL Coordinator, R.Slack@leeds.ac.uk

The IMPALA consortium is led by Dr Cath Senior, Met Office, UK. For more information or to arrange an interview, please contact the Met Office press office on +44 (0) 1392 886655 or pressoffice@metoffice.gov.uk

The UMFULA consortium is led by Dr Declan Conway, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment. For more information or to arrange an interview, please contact D.Conway@lse.ac.uk

Editors’ notes

The IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report presents strong evidence that warming over land across Africa has increased over the last 50–100 years. This warming trend is very likely to continue. Surface temperatures have already increased by 0.5–2°C over the past hundred years. However, over large areas of Africa there is not enough historical data to show observed trends.

There is evidence that temperature changes have played a role in the increased incidence of malaria in parts of eastern Africa, and have already driven changes in the practices of South African farmers. Production of wheat and maize in parts of Africa has been impacted by climate change, as has the productivity of fisheries of the Great Lakes and Lake Kariba and fruit-bearing trees in the Sahel. (IPCC (2014). Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Chapter 22, Africa.)

Many African societies are especially vulnerable to climate extremes and weather-related disasters. High poverty rates mean that people have few assets to protect themselves or bounce back from disasters; and existing infrastructure and development programmes are not set up to withstand the variable climate.

Africa’s future climate could look quite different from today’s. Under a worst case scenario, average temperatures could rise by up to 6oC over the course of the century, depending on how effectively global society slashes the greenhouse gas emissions which are primarily responsible for global warming. Under the lowest emissions scenario assessed by the IPCC, average temperature rises across Africa are projected to be less than 2°C over the course of the 21st century.

The projected increases in average temperatures mask the more dramatic changes that Africans may expect to see in extreme events: scientists anticipate that heavy rainfall, heat waves and drought will become more frequent over the decades ahead. For example, there will be a likely increase in the frequency of hot days across the Sahara and parts of west, east and southern Africa. Eastern and southeastern Africa will likely experience more heavy rainfall, with more extreme wet days by the mid-21st century and greater potential for intense flooding (IPCC (2014). Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Chapter 22, Africa. For more information, see https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/ or https://www.cdkn.org/ar5-toolkit)

A pilot phase of FCFA in 2013-14 investigated the degree to which existing climate information is used in policy and investment decisions. Not only are there gaps in climate information, but researchers found that climate information is poorly presented and understood. Governments and businesses struggle to apply the information in their decision-making processes. The FCFA programme will tackle these challenges by strengthening climate information and making it more relevant and usable for decision-makers. The results of the pilot phase can be viewed on www.futureclimateafrica.org or take a virtual tour through the results on www.cdkn.org/future-climate-africa

 Image: Senegal, courtesy Sebastian Losada