The vast expanse of the 54-nation African continent is relatively unserved and unwarned.
09/03/2023 06:41 AM EDTNAIROBI, Kenya — Much of the world takes daily weather forecasts for granted. But most of Africa’s 1.3 billion people live with little advance knowledge of what’s to come. That can be both deadly and expensive, with damage running in the billions of dollars.
The widespread inability to track and forecast the weather affects key development choices, their commentary said: “There is no point investing in smallholder farms, for example, if floods are simply going to wash them away.” And because of a lack of funding, the number of observations by atmospheric devices usually used with weather balloons decreased by as much as 50% over Africa between 2015 and 2020, a “particularly serious issue,” the WMO said in a report last year.
And it’s not just forecasting. As climate shocks such as Somalia’s worst drought in decades become more common, better recording of weather data is a critical need for decision-making. In countries like Somalia and Mozambique, with some of the continent’s longest and most vulnerable coastlines, the lack of effective weather monitoring and early warning systems have contributed to thousands of deaths in disasters such as tropical storms and flooding.
The lack of weather data in much of Africa also complicates efforts to link certain natural disasters to climate change.
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