Satellite rainfall estimates (SREs) play a crucial role in weather monitoring, forecasting and modeling, particularly in regions where ground-based observations may be limited. This study presents a comprehensive evaluation of three commonly used SREs—African Rainfall Climatology version 2 (ARC2), Climate Hazards Group Infrared Precipitation with Station data (CHIRPS) and Tropical Application of Meteorology using SATellite data and ground-based observation (TAMSAT)— with respect to their performance in detecting rainfall patterns in Nigeria at daily scales from 2002 to 2022. Observed data obtained from the Nigeria Meteorological Agency (NiMet) are used as reference data. Evaluation metrics such as correlation coefficient, root mean square error, mean error, bias, probability of detection (POD), false alarm ratio (FAR), and critical success index (CSI) are employed to assess the performance of the SREs. The results show that all the SREs exhibit low bias during the major rainfall season from May to October, and the products significantly overestimate observed rainfall during the dry period from November to March in the Sahel and Savannah Zones. Similarly, over the Guinea Zone, all the products indicate overestimation in the dry season. The underperformance of SREs in dry seasons could be attributed to the rainfall retrieval algorithms, intensity of rainfall occurrence and spatial-temporal resolution. These factors could potentially lead to the accuracy of the rainfall retrieval being reduced due to intense stratiform clouds. However, all the SREs indicated better detection capabilities and less false alarms during the wet season than in dry periods. CHIRPS and TAMSAT exhibited high POD and CSI values with the least FAR across agro-climatic zones during dry periods. Generally, CHIRPS turned out to be the best SRE and, as such, would provide a useful dataset for research and operational use in Nigeria.

AbstractSkilful flood forecasts have the potential to inform preparedness actions across scales, from smallholder farmers through to humanitarian actors, but require verification first to ensure such early warning information is robust. However, verification efforts in data‐scarce regions are limited to only a few sparse locations at pre‐existing river gauges. Hence, alternative data sources are urgently needed to enhance flood forecast verification to better guide preparedness actions. In this study, we assess the usefulness of less conventional data such as flood impact data for verifying flood forecasts compared with river‐gauge observations in Uganda and Kenya. The flood impact data contains semi‐quantitative and qualitative information on the location and number of reported flood events derived from five different data repositories (Dartmouth Flood Observatory, DesInventar, Emergency Events Database, GHB, and local) over the 2007–2018 period. In addition, river‐gauge observations from stations located within the affected districts and counties are used as a reference for verification of flood forecasts from the Global Flood Awareness System. Our results reveal both the potential and the challenges of using impact data to improve flood forecast verification in data‐scarce regions. From these, we provide a set of recommendations for using impact data to support anticipatory action planning.

Introduction: Climate factors in fluence the state of human health and wellbeing. Climate-related threats are particularly being experienced by vulnerable populations in Africa. A Question (Q)-Storming session was convened at an international climate adaptation conference. It promoted dialog among a diverse spectrum of researchers, climate and medical scientists, health professionals, national government of ficials, civil society, business, and international governing organizations. The session identi fied approaches for the effective integration of health within African national climate adaptation policies. Materials and methods: Two organizations partnered to convene the session at the Adaptations Futures 2018 Conference in Cape Town. Q-storming (which is an inverse approach to brainstorming) was applied to extract ideas from all participants. Four topics were presented during the session: (i) adaptive capacities related to climate change and infectious diseases; (ii) adaptive capacity of African governments in relation to health and climate change; (iii) making climate science work to protect the health of vulnerable populations; and (iv) making climate-health research usable. Results: Nine cross-cutting adaptation themes were generated (i.e. key de finitions, adaptive capacity, health sector priorities, resources, operational capacities and procedures, contextual conditions, information pathways, and information utility). The Q-Storming approach was a valuable tool for improving the understanding of the complexities of climate-health research collaborations, and priority identi fication for improved adaptation and service delivery. Conclusion: Concerted recognition regarding dif ficulties in linking climate science and health vulnerability at the interface of practitioners and decision-makers is required, for better integration and use of climate-health research in climate adaptation in Africa. This can be achieved by innovations offered through Q-Storming. (c) 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NCND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)

The Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT) is an international standard heat index used by the health, industrial, sports, and climate sectors to assess thermal comfort during heat extremes. Observations of its components, the globe and the wet bulb temperature (WBT), are however sparse. Therefore WBGT is difficult to derive, making it common to rely on approximations, such as the ones developed by Liljegren et al. (2008, https://doi.org/10.1080/15459620802310770, WBGTLiljegren ${\mathrm{W}\mathrm{B}\mathrm{G}\mathrm{T}}_{\mathrm{L}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{l}\mathrm{j}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{g}\mathrm{r}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{n}}$ ) and by the American College of Sports Medicine ( WBGTACSM87 ${\mathrm{W}\mathrm{B}\mathrm{G}\mathrm{T}}_{\mathrm{A}\mathrm{C}\mathrm{S}\mathrm{M}87}$ ). In this study, a global data set is created by implementing an updated WBGT method using ECMWF ERA5 gridded meteorological variables and is evaluated against existing WBGT methods. The new method, WBGTBrimicombe ${\mathrm{W}\mathrm{B}\mathrm{G}\mathrm{T}}_{\mathrm{B}\mathrm{r}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{m}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{c}\mathrm{o}\mathrm{m}\mathrm{b}\mathrm{e}}$ , uses globe temperature calculated using mean radiant temperature and is found to be accurate in comparison to WBGTLiljegren ${\mathrm{W}\mathrm{B}\mathrm{G}\mathrm{T}}_{\mathrm{L}\mathrm{i}\mathrm{l}\mathrm{j}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{g}\mathrm{r}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{n}}$ across three heatwave case studies. In addition, it is found that WBGTACSM87 ${\mathrm{W}\mathrm{B}\mathrm{G}\mathrm{T}}_{\mathrm{A}\mathrm{C}\mathrm{S}\mathrm{M}87}$ is not an adequate approximation of WBGT. Our new method is a candidate for a global forecasting early warning system.

Anticipatory actions are increasingly being taken before an extreme flood event to reduce the impacts on lives and livelihoods. Local contextualized information is required to support real-time local decisions on where and when to act and what anticipatory actions to take. This study defines an impact-based, early-warning trigger system that integrates flood forecasts with livelihood information, such as crop calendars, to target anticipatory actions better. We demonstrate the application of this trigger system using a flood case study from the Katakwi District in Uganda. First, we integrate information on the local crop cycles with the flood forecasts to define the impact-based trigger system. Second, we verify the impact-based system using historical flood impact information and then compare it with the existing hazard-based system in the context of humanitarian decisions. Study findings show that the impact-based trigger system has an improved probability of flood detection compared with the hazard-based system. There are fewer missed events in the impact-based system, while the trigger dates are similar in both systems. In a humanitarian context, the two systems trigger anticipatory actions at the same time. However, the impact-based trigger system can be further investigated in a different context (e.g., for livelihood protection) to assess the value of the local information. The impact-based system could also be a valuable tool to validate the existing hazard-based system, which builds more confidence in its use in informing anticipatory actions. The study findings, therefore, should open avenues for further dialogue on what the impact-based trigger system could mean within the broader forecast-based action landscape toward building the resilience of at-risk communities.

With climate impacts increasing in both frequency and intensity and unprecedented climate events having devastating results, the need for timely policy and action to support adaption is not in doubt. However, the gap between policy and action leaves many communities exposed to extreme events and vulnerable to loss of life and livelihoods. This is partly due to the difficulty policymakers face when confronted by climate projections with their inherent uncertainties. Competing sectoral interests and a lack of resources often compound such challenges. To address these issues, the Implementation Centric Evolving Climate Change Adaptation Process (ICECCAP) encases the climate risk assessment in an enabling framework to track resource, knowledge and regulatory needs. This process was applied as part of a UNEP project to support the National Adaptation Plan in Pakistan. A range of climate storylines, describing plausible climate futures and their potential environmental and socio-economic impacts, were developed and discussed with local stakeholders, including policy makers from across levels of governance. The process allowed us to translate complex physical science into narratives that could be communicated clearly to non-technical national stakeholders, forming a basis for subsequent negotiation and decision-making at a local level to address multiple risks and respond to adaptation needs at this finer resolution. This reflects our aim, as part of the My Climate Risk network, to amalgamate bottom-up climate risk assessment with climate projection data that remains meaningful at a local scale. We show how the integration of scientific research and local expert stakeholder views can promote buy-in to adaptation planning. Grounded in a systemic and comprehensive understanding of potential impacts of climate change, this process has implications across socio-economic, environmental and governance spheres.

Existing constraints in current climate risk assessments make them inappropriate to effectively assess the true exposure of society and businesses to climate-related risk. Using the key constraints to guide a conceptual framework, we identify four cross-cutting and inter-related critical paths for improvement.

This chapter provides a synthesis of the current and future climate risks for Africa and the range of impacts in the medium to long term. It also seeks to highlight areas where research and resources might need to be focused, in the future, to limit or avoid negative climate risks to socio-economic development.

As the world faces an uncertain future due to climate variability, environmental and climate change, and an increase in extreme hydrometeorological events, investing in early warning early action mechanisms can be an effective way to prepare and adapt to changes and extremes and reduce any impending impacts. Such an investment will require an understanding of the information needs of the users/user-groups, and in particular, the communities at risk, to ensure the design of tailored anticipatory actions, as well as an evaluation of how forecasts perform in detecting these extreme events and their impacts. This helps to ensure that flood-risk preparedness actions are better contextualised and not taken in vain. Community-led approaches for anticipatory action planning are based on the engagement with the communities at risk and can be an effective way of ensuring that: 1) the information needs of the specific user-groups are identified and integrated with the development of preparedness actions and plans; 2) data on loss and damages to lives and livelihoods can be used to demonstrate how reliable the forecasts are in informing early actions at the community level; and 3) gaps and challenges that hinder effective use of early warning information are identified across user-groups to help improve on the design and dissemination of early warning information. In this talk, we bring together information collected at the community and disaster management levels together with a recent evaluation of flood forecasts using impact (loss and damage) reports at a district level, to show how community-led approaches can help towards improving early warning mechanisms. By integrating global hydro-meteorological forecasts with information on crop calendars and impact reports collected from farmers and local communities, an enhanced impact-based flood early warning system focusing on crop impacts, as well as the natural hazard, is developed for a flood-prone district in Uganda (Katakwi).

Extreme heat is a growing risk to both human and planetary health. It is an area of research with many mathematical models that attempt to capture mostly human responses to thermal conditions. However, like many science fields software is often not developed in a reproducible manner, which adheres to the shared principles of open science, software and research. Here, we present thermofeel which is a python thermal comfort library that was developed at the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) with the dual purpose of being able to be integrated into their operational forecasting systems and allowing users of ECMWF products to be able to use the same methods with their data. In addition, hosting thermofeel on GitHub allows for future growth through open research software process in line with the fast-moving extreme heat field and gives the potential for collaboration between the ECMWF with many other user groups. Further, the development here could lead to a global heat hazard early warning system and the first forecasting results will be presented demonstrating the skill of thermal indices. Finally, thermofeel is currently in pre-operational forecasting at ECMWF and is available for everybody through pip and GitHub. This work has been funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation programme under Grant Agreement no 824115.

The provision of weather and climate information (WCI) can help the most at-risk communities cope and adapt to the impacts of extreme events. While significant progress has been made in ensuring improved availability of WCI, there remain obstacles that hinder the accessibility and use of this information for adaptation planning. Attention has now focused on the “usability gap” to ensure useful and usable WCI informs practise. Less attention has however been directed on barriers to the active production and use of WCI. In this study, we combine two frameworks through a bottom-up approach to present a more coordinated institutional response that would be required to ensure a better flow of information from information providers to users at community level and vice versa. The bottom-up approach was designed in form of Farmers Agri-Met Village Advisory Clinics (FAMVACs) and Listening Groups (LG) and was initiated by Uganda Meteorological Authority (UNMA) as a way of ensuring connections between the information providers, the disseminators, and the communities to specifically give voice to the communities to provide feedback on the use of WCI in coping with flood risks. This approach is used to identify the barriers and opportunities in the production/provision and use of WCI for flood risk preparedness for a case study in Eastern Uganda. First, a use-case is developed for Katakwi District where smallholder farming communities have recorded their coping practises and barriers to the use of WCI in practise. Second, online interviews with practitioners from disaster management institutions are used to identify barriers to the production and provision of WCI to local farming communities. Findings show that for providers, barriers such as accessibility and completeness of data hinder the production of useful WCI. In situations where useful information is available, technical language used in the format and timeliness in dissemination hinder usability by local farmers. Useful and usable WCI may not be acted on in practise due to factors such as costs or market availability e.g., lack of access to improved seeds. Further, the study highlights possible solutions to bridge the identified gaps and they include capacity building, fostering data collaborations across sectors, data translation to simple advisories, among others. The study also presents the FAMVACs approach which shows the importance of a more coordinated response with a shift of focus from the users of information only, to a more inclusive understanding of the data and information gaps across the wider provider-user landscapes. We argue that this would contribute to more effective disaster management at both the national and local levels.

Here the development of the python library thermofeel is described. thermofeel was developed so that prominent internationally used thermal indices (i.e. Universal Thermal Climate Index and Wet Bulb Globe Temperature) could be implemented into operational weather forecasting systems (i.e. the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts) whilst also adhering to open research practices. This library will be of benefit to many sectors including meteorology, sport, health and social care, hygiene, agriculture and building. In addition, it could be used in heat early warning systems which, with the right preparedness measures, has the potential to save lives from thermal extremes.

Background This paper examines the role of improved groundwater access and management in providing opportunities for sustainable agricultural intensification and building the resilience of community farmers in Southern Burkina Faso. The findings contribute to current debates about pathways of commercialisation and adaptation in the African Sahel, especially those seeking to find responses to managing the impacts of climate change and delivering on the Sustainable Development Goals. Methods This paper presents data that has been thematically analysed based on the Framework for Sustainable Intensification developed by Pretty and Bharucha (Ann Bot 114:1571–1596, 2014). The data used includes 144 Vulnerability Baseline Assessments which were conducted at the start of the project with the four target Burkinabe communities (Kado, Poa, Tomo, and Zhilivele), and 33 monitoring interviews and vulnerability assessments from the Burkinabe communities of Poa and Tomo to track progress and behaviour change resulting from the BRAVE project interventions. Results The data analysis showed that Burkinabe communities are already making some use of groundwater to support their agricultural livelihoods; most do this through accessing groundwater from shallow wells. It was also shown that there were improvements in the four main themes Identified by the Sustainable Intensification Framework. These included improved information sharing through increased peer-to-peer learning and improvements in confidence levels; improved social cohesion through reduction in community conflict over water resource management; asset improvements shown by tangible improvement of yields; and increased awareness exemplified by behaviour change. Conclusions Through using the Sustainable Intensification framework, this paper argues that such an approach improves essential aspects of resilience building such as information sharing, improved local governance and increased social capital and income. We argue that such changes provide essential pathways to reducing vulnerability and increasing resilience of at-risk communities in the Sahel, but that national policy alignment and investment is essential for long term change and sustainability.

Decision makers need actionable information on the factors that inhibit household adaptation to climate variability and other changes, especially those changes reinforcing environmentally unsustainable livelihood strategies. In this paper, we show how a combination of quantitative and qualitative data can help assess current livelihood vulnerability and the social and institutional obstacles facing specific population groups that lock in risk and undermine opportunities. Detailed analysis of current household economies in two case study communities (one in Uganda and one in Kenya) in the Lake Victoria Basin, East Africa, was combined with a qualitative, intersectional exploration of constraints on income adaptation and diversification. Quantitative household economy analysis showed low levels of household disposable income overall and additionally, poor returns on investment from enterprises typically controlled by women. Qualitative research highlighted changes in gender roles driven by women's entrepreneurial responses to reduced household income from traditional agricultural and natural resource-based activities. However, due to unequal access to finance and culturally mediated norms and expectations, many women's enterprises were small scale and insecure. The broader political economy context is one of limited national investment in education and infrastructure, further constraining local opportunities for human and economic development. The approach described here was directed by the need to understand and quantify economic vulnerability, along with the cultural and institutional constraints on adaptation, as a basis for making better adaptation policies and interventions to build resilience over the longer term.

In 2019, a heatwave - an unusual extended period of hot weather - broke the UK's highest recorded temperature of 38.7 degrees C set in 2003. Of concern is that for summer 2019, this resulted in 892 excess deaths. With the intensity and frequency of UK heatwaves projected to increase, and summer temperatures predicted to be 5 degrees C hotter by 2070, urgent action is needed to prepare for, and adapt to, the changes now and to come. Yet it remains unclear what actions are needed and by whom. In response, a systematic literature review of UK heatwaves peer reviewed publications, inclusive of keyword criteria (total papers returned = 183), was conducted to understand what lessons have been learnt and what needs to happen next. Our research shows that heatwaves remain largely an invisible risk in the UK. Communication over what UK residents should do, the support needed to make changes, and their capacity to enact those changes, is often lacking. In turn, there is an inherent bias where research focuses too narrowly on the health and building sectors over other critical sectors, such as agriculture. An increased amount of action and leadership is therefore necessary from the UK government to address this.

Heatwaves are increasing in intensity, duration and frequency. One of the impacts of heatwaves is heat stress, which can lead to death and raised morbidity. This project, uses a mixed method approach. Using the ERA5.HEAT reanalysis data of the UTCI – a bio-meteorological heat stress index- and temperature, to study the climatology and trends of heat at a global level and at a regional and country level for African nations. In addition, we review a range of literature from academic papers, international reports and EM-DAT the international disaster database. All of this reveals the extent to which heat risk is communicated. As well as, revealing the growing size of heatwaves. These together provide evidence of whether more preparedness measures are needed.

Abstract Heatwaves are increasing in frequency, duration, and intensity due to climate change. They are associated with high mortality rates and cross‐sectional impacts including a reduction in crop yield and power outages. Here we demonstrate that there are large deficiencies in reporting of heatwave impacts in international disasters databases, international organization reports, and climate bulletins. We characterize the distribution of heat stress across the world focusing on August in the Northern Hemisphere, when notably heatwaves have taken place (i.e., 2003, 2010, and 2020) for the last 20 years using the ERA5‐HEAT reanalysis of the Universal Thermal Comfort Index and establish heat stress has grown larger in extent, more so during a heatwave. Comparison of heat stress against the emergency events impacts database and climate reports reveals underreporting of heatwave‐related impacts. This work suggests an internationally agreed protocol should be put in place for impact reporting by organizations and national government, facilitating implementation of preparedness measures, and early warning systems.

This is policy brief is for the Ugandan Government and explains how the Livelihood Impact Based System (LIMB) has been designed, built,and put into practice through the NIMFRU project. Importantly it also identifies how this system can support communities and disaster managers toimprove disaster response, and has the capability being scaled up across Africa.