Improving our knowledge of African weather and climate – Climate Science Research Partnership (CSRP)

Africa is particularly vulnerable to impacts of climate and rainfall variability. Small changes in seasonal rainfall totals or timings of the rainy-season onset can have huge impacts on food security, water availability, human health and social and economic infrastructures. The IPCC AR4 assessment demonstrated that Africa is one of the areas where a better understanding of the drivers of climate variability and change is urgently required.

The Climate Science Research Partnership (CSRP)-Africa is a Met Office Hadley Centre project, funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID), running from January 2010 to December 2012. The project aims to improve our knowledge of weather and climate processes over Africa, to improve model predictions and simulations of the atmosphere and to engage with UK and African partners to ensure the outcomes are useful to all stakeholders.

Here we will introduce some key science findings from the CSRP to give a broad flavour of current Hadley Centre research. We will discuss: Met Office model representation of monsoon onset and rain migration; Sensitivity nudging experiments using the regional climate model; Rainfall teleconnections to SSTs; Soil moisture interactions; African Easterly Wave representation in weather, seasonal and climate models and finally give some details of the capacity building activities we have in place.

The significant challenges remaining in African atmospheric modelling will be discussed alongside future plans for the CSRP project.