FCFA report provides climate information for Africa

Africa’s Climate: Helping Decision-makers Make Sense of Climate Information is the first major programme-wide report and digibook to emerge from Future Climate for Africa (FCFA). FCFA comprises five major research projects to develop better climate information for Africa and to test how the new information could be used in decision-making, with potential benefit for millions of affected Africans.

Key findings from the report:

• Climate modelling indicates that east Africa is expected to warm in the next five to 40 years, although changes in rainfall are much less certain.
• Extreme events (floods, droughts, heatwaves, and so on) are expected to change and, in most cases, increase into the future.
• The region is severely understudied, because of a lack of scientific observation data, such as that from weather stations.
• Most government departments are planning according to a three- to five-year time horizon, while the climate projections are based on decades-longer timeframes, such as looking to 2050 and beyond.
• Although there is uncertainty associated with the future climate projections, climate change will have significant economic impacts across Africa.
• Future climate change is likely to lead to new risks: the negative impacts seen from today’s climate variability are likely to become worse.
• While there is often uncertainty in climate projections, this should not be a reason for inaction.

Download the report.