THE USE OF REMOTE SENSING

DATA/INFORMATION AS PROXY OF WEATHER AND CLIMATE IN THE GREATER HORN OF

AFRICA

Gilbert O OumaIGAD Climate Applications and

Prediction Centre (ICPAC) Nairobi

Formerly Drought Monitoring Centre - Nairobi (DMCN)

Background

• The Horn of Africa is prone to extreme climate events such as droughts and floods with severe negative impacts on key socio-economic sectors

• Drought Monitoring Centre (DMC) in Nairobi and a sub-centre in Harare were established in 1989 by 24 countries in eastern and southern Africa under the auspices of WMO and UNDP– to minimize the negative impacts of

extreme climate events – to take advantage of the good years

Background Cont.

• due to the increased demand for climate information and prediction services, the Nairobi and Harare components started operating independently in 1998 – Drought Monitoring Centre, Nairobi

(DMCN) GHA region– Drought Monitoring Centre, Harare

(DMCH) Southern Africa

Background Cont.

• In 2000 DMCN was absorbed as an autonomous specialized institution of IGAD

• The name of DMCN was then changed to IGAD CLIMATE PREDICTION AND APPLICATIONS CENTRE (ICPAC) in order to properly reflect all its new mandates, mission and objectives within the IGAD system

ICPAC MEMBER STATES

-10 0 10 20 30 40 50

-30

-20

-10

0

10

20

30

Sudan

Djibouti

Ethiopia

Eritrea

Somalia

Kenya

BurundiRwanda

Uganda

Tanzania

Main Objectives

• To improve the technical capacity of producers and users of climatic information, in order to enhance the input to and use of climate monitoring and forecasting products in planning

Objectives Cont.

• To develop an improved, proactive, timely, broad-based system of information and product dissemination and feedback, at both sub-regional and national scales through national partners

Objectives Cont.

• To expand the knowledge base within the sub-region in order to facilitate informed decision making, through a clearer understanding of climatic and climate-related processes, enhanced research and development, and a well managed reference archive of data and information products

Mission of ICPAC

• Fostering sub-regional and national capacity for climate information, prediction products and services, early warning, and related applications for sustainable development in the IGAD Sub-Region

Products

• Monitoring of past climate– The recent past climate over the

Horn of Africa is monitored in order to detect the evolution of any significant anomalies that could impact negatively on the socio – economic activities of the region•Dekadal, monthly and seasonal

summaries of rainfall and drought severity

•Monthly temperature anomalies– Given in bulletins

Products Cont.

• Current State of Climate– Monitored and assessed using

climate diagnostics and modelling techniques

– These are derived from: •State of the Sea Surface Temperature

anomalies over all the major oceans•Surface and upper air anomalies of

pressure, winds and other climate parameters

Products Cont.

• Prediction products– Derived from:

• Statistical and dynamical models run at the centre

• Dynamical model outputs from advanced centres – On dekadal, monthly and seasonal time scales

• The prediction products are provided through – Outlooks for dekads and months in bulletins– Seasonal outlooks in pre-season consensus

climate outlook fora

Products Cont.

• Impacts– An assessment of the vulnerability

together with the current and potential socio-economic conditions and impacts (both negative and positive) associated with the observed and projected climate anomalies is also made on a dekadal, monthly and seasonal time scales

Droughts

Floods

Products Cont.

• These products are disseminated to all National Meteorological and Hydrological Services of the participating countries to serve as early warning information to a variety of sectoral users of meteorological information and products including policy makers, planners, health, energy, agricultural and water resource sectors, farmers as well as research institutions among others

Climate MonitoringClimate Monitoring

• Climate monitoring process entails assessing the current climate conditions in relation to history

• Use historical data to develop basic statistics that form the basis for the assessment

Climate Monitoring Cont.Climate Monitoring Cont.

• Lack of long-term data (Rainfall and Temperature) over Somalia

• OLR – Available from 1974– Poor spatial resolution – No proper ground-truthing over

Somalia done yet

Time Series MAM OLR (1974 - 2005)

235.0

240.0

245.0

250.0

255.0

260.0

265.0

270.0

275.0

280.0

285.0

290.0

1974

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Years

Sea

son

al A

vera

ge

MAM

Linear (MAM)

Time Series JJA OLR (1974 - 2005)

250.0

255.0

260.0

265.0

270.0

275.0

280.0

1974

1975

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2005

Years

Sea

son

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vera

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JJA

Linear (JJA)

Time Series SON OLR (1974 - 2005)

245.0

250.0

255.0

260.0

265.0

270.0

275.0

280.0

285.0

290.0

1974

1975

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Sea

son

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ges

SON

Linear (SON)

Time Series DJF OLR (1974 - 2005)

255.0

260.0

265.0

270.0

275.0

280.0

285.0

290.0

295.0

300.0

1974

1975

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Years

Sea

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ges

DJF

Linear (DJF)

Climate Observation

• ICPAC works with the member countries to improve the climate observation network in the region in order to ensure availability of continuous high quality data that are required for climate change detection, attribution and other applications

Data for Climate Monitoring

• For purposes of climate monitoring, both historical and real-time daily data of rainfall, maximum and minimum temperatures are used

• For historical data, a base period of 30 years (1961-90) has been used to generate the desired statistics on a ten day, monthly and seasonal time scales

• The historical climate data were obtained from the 10 National Meteorological and Hydrological Services of the participating countries in the Eastern Africa region

• The data is continuously updated– From the member states through email

every ten-days– Through Capacity building workshops in

which the National experts are mandated to bring their National data sets

• Near real time climate data is acquired through a number of modes– Initially, fax and telephone services – Currently, most countries send

through email

• For Somalia this has not been happening

Seasonal Forecast

• Use rainfall data from climatological regions in a country to locate highly correlated SST areas over the global oceans

• No data over Somalia• Use proxy

– OLR– RFE

H A R G

G A LC

B ELE

BAID O

BAR DAFG O

M O G A

BO R A

42.00 44.00 46.00 48.00 50.00

0.00

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ZONE1

ZONE2

ZONE 3

DISTRIBUTION OF RAINFALL ZONES OVER SOM ALIA

OND AND ERF Over Mogadishu Z1

-1.5

-1

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1

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2.5

3

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Ano

mal

ies RAINFALL

RFE

XMRPRED