Capacity-building in Africa
Operational Mesoscale
Weather Prediction
Most of Africa’s disasters are meteorological in origin
• Improved weather-forecasting infrastructure is needed for
- agriculture – rainfall predictions, locusts
- public health – dust-storm predictions, malaria
- public safety – floods, aviation weather
Two-phase plan to address this need
• Phase – I - Establish operational mesoscale forecasting system at
NCAR (using modest computer), and provide products to African weather services. Focus first on West Africa.
- Improve model (forecast quality) and graphical interface based on feedback from African forecasters.
- Conduct a workshop for forecasters, in Accra, on the effective use of high-resolution meteorological-model products.
- Quick funding is currently being sought for this effort.
Two-phase plan to address this need (cont.)
• Phase – II- Address needs of all of Africa (not only West Africa) for
improved meteorological services.- Expand area coverage of model high-resolution weather
products using larger computer.- Expand educational component – Work with African
universities and meteorological services to improve knowledge of numerical weather prediction and mesoscale meteorology.
- Develop partnerships with African stakeholders (agriculture, water, etc.) to adapt weather products to special needs – e.g., coupled weather/agricultural models, dust-storm models, etc.
- Funding will be sought through the Millennium Challenge Corporation
Early Partners
• University of Ghana – Legon (through Ben Lamptey – NCAR post doc)
• Ghana Meteorological Agency (through Ben Lamptey – NCAR post doc)
• Private sector (ZedX Inc., coupling weather models with ag models, etc.)
Planned forecast-model grids for Phase-I system (D2 – 13.5 km grid increment)
D1
D2
D1
D2
Example of prototype forecasts provided over the web to African forecasters for two months earlier this year – when computing power
was temporarily available