Description: West Africa has experienced some of the most extreme rainfall variability anywhere in the world. This climatic variability is directly affecting the livelihoods of its growing population.
In recent decades, West Africa has experienced some of the most extreme rainfall variability anywhere in the world. This climatic variability is directly affecting the livelihoods of its growing population. In this region rainfall is notoriously variable and contributed to an extensive and long-lived drought triggering regional scale famine in the 1970s and 1980s. In more recent years, a partial recovery of seasonal rainfall totals in the Sahel has been accompanied by devastating flooding events. Despite a
This project will build on the largest multidisciplinary research effort ever undertaken in the area of African climate and environment, the African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analysis (AMMA), to address the challenges of understanding how the monsoon will change in future decades, and how this information can be most effectively used to support climate-compatible development in the region.
We will focus on weather events that significantly impact on livelihoods (e.g. flood-producing storms, crop-damaging dry spells), and combine traditional computer models of climate change with observations and cutting edge regional models which realistically depict individual storms. Applying expert judgement to these outputs, we will identify impacts and adaptation options in water resources and agriculture, including targeted studies on urban flooding and crop breeding.