Greater Horn of Africa – Strengthening early warning and early action systems for meteorological, hydrological and climate extremes
Project background
The four-year CREWS Greater Horn of Africa project - with USD 5,240,998 million in funding from CREWS – aims to enhance the capacities for regional and national entities to produce and use climate, weather, and hydrological services, including early warning systems.
The WMO support activities intended to improve technical and infrastructural capacity, build conditions to deliver operational data services, strengthen data exchange between member states and enhance regional and national capacities of WIGOS and WIS. In addition, WMO intends in Ethiopia to strengthen the capacities of the end users to demand, understand and utilize climate and impact based early warning information and echnical assistance to develop hydromet systems including, observation, data management and archiving, data analysis, forecasting in support of hydromet investment projects. WMO also aims in Somalia to improve the capacity development for staff in priority technical areas (observation, data management and analysis, meteorological and hydrological forecasting), strengthen the development and delivery of services to the priority farming and pastoralist communities and support technical design of minimum basic observing, data management, forecasting and service delivery systems. Finally, WMO will strengthen national capabilities in Sudan, as well as promote gender inclusivity and address the needs of vulnerable groups throughout the entire EW-EA value chain in the region.
Objective(s)
Some expected outcomes include:
- The establishment of regional models for Long-Range forecasts
- Established gridded quality controlled regional climate datasets
- Development and implementation of procedures to obtain, pre-process and analyze seasonal and annual to decadal climate information from multiple sources
- Each country operates a number of observing stations (surface & upper-air) providing data internationally according to the GBON requirements
- Installation and operationalization of improved data management system
- A number of flood contingency plans prepared for transboundary basins in Horn of Africa
- Improved ability for end-users to receive understandable, actionable warning information
- Improved ability for financial resources to be mobilized in the case of a disaster
- Increased capacity to coordinate the receipt of warnings with disaster response
- Completed training courses and training material, resulting in greater technical capacity for staff
Outputs
To enhance the capacities for regional and national entities to produce and use climate, weather, and hydrological services, including early warning systems.
Expected outcomes
Strengthened regional capacities and coordination for climate, weather, and hydrological services:
- Improving regional services to support countries to provide effective EWS.
- Strengthening regional coordination and cooperation for effective EWS and climate services.
Strengthening impact based Early Warning Services and targeted climate services in Ethiopia:
- Reaching the last-mile: Communities with actionable EWS and ensuring early actions.
- Developing demand driven climate and early warning information services.
Strengthening national capabilities in Somalia:
- Develop and deliver priority public hydromet services.
- Institutional development.
Strengthening national capabilities in Sudan:
- Strengthening community involvement in EWS.
- Strengthening flood early warning services.
Achievements
The climate of the Greater Horn of Africa is driven by complex interactions between various features acting at local and global scales including the El Niño Southern Oscillation and Indian Ocean Dipole. The region is highly exposed to climate-related risks. These risks frequently materialize because of extremely variable and erratic rainfall combined with increasing temperatures, and in recent years, this has brought droughts and floods with greater frequency and intensity. For example, in late 2019, floods struck the Horn of Africa after prolonged rainfalls that was double the seasonal average (WMO, No 1253). The economies and livelihoods of countries in the region are highly dependent on rain-fed agriculture, which is sensitive to weather and climate variability. Climate extremes, mainly associated with rainfall, have resulted in increased livestock, crop, and human diseases, coupled with land degradation, which leads to reduced crop production and increased crop failures and livestock deaths. With global temperatures 1.5°C higher relative to the pre-industrial period, the impact of climate extremes is likely to increase economic costs for governments through diversion of development resources, food insecurity, malnutrition and loss of livelihoods in affected areas, especially arid and semi-arid areas of the region.
- Climate Resilience and Adaptation
- Disaster Risk Reduction
- WMO Integrated Global Observing System
- Capacity Development
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