Capacity Building and Development of a WRF-Chem Based Air Quality Forecasting System for Eastern Africa

Air quality is a pressing issue in Africa and will increase in severity based on future shifts in both anthropogenic and natural activities. In order to help countries in East and Southern Africa prepare to face these challenges the NASA SERVIR program has been funded to develop an air quality forecasting system and build the capacity for these countries to maintain this framework well after the completion of this project. The work presented here will focus on the initial phase of this project in which we have developed and analyzed a comprehensive air quality survey to identify stakeholder organizations at over seven countries and quantify what organizations are best suited for public discourse and dissemination of information regarding air quality and its impacts for our member countries. This survey also serves to identify and link ongoing air quality observations in the region that are critical for validating our Weather Research and Forecasting with Chemistry (WRF-Chem) data assimilation model run for the region. Here we present the co-development process for this model between the investigators and the stakeholders, results from the initial runs from this model, and fully describe the satellite AOD-based assimilation package that will allow for a 48-hour forecast of air quality over Eastern Africa. We also will detail the next steps in this project that aims to have this operational air quality model running in Africa within three years along with public air quality alerts that are comparable to those operating for other regions throughout the globe.