African Countries Get New Tool to Predict Climate-Related Disasters

A new method called nowcasting has been spearheaded by the University of Leeds and was tested in Kenya last year. The technology has existed in many developed countries but was not available to sub-Saharan African until now. Kenya now uses it regularly, which helped with the evacuation of people affected by landslides in Western Kenya and flooding of Lake Victoria. The data is satellite derived and Senegal, Nigeria and Ghana have teams entrusted to interpret and issue early warnings. As extreme weather conditions become more frequent on the continent and the planet as a whole warms, University of Leeds experts warn that the technology is more vital than ever since climate change is making the storms more intensive. The forecasts cover all of Africa and are freely available online but the work now is focused on making the information more accessible to everyone. (Reuters) 

Analysis

Meanwhile, Oxfam said Kenya is dealing with a triple problem of floods, locusts and Covid. The floods, they say, follow a series of intermittent droughts and flooding, and along with the second locust outbreak, is the latest in “a decade of back-to-back crises” linked to climate change. Cycles between the droughts are becoming shorter, impairing recovery time and exacerbating underlying poverty in the northern counties like Turkana, host to Kenya’s Kakuma refugee camp, where we have previously worked and lived. Turkana is one of Kenya’s most impoverished and marginalized counties and is often among the epicenters for drought, and thus the people, who are primarily pastoralists, and their livestock are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Kenya’s health and nutrition coordinator said thousands of displaced people have been forced to move in with friends and relatives or makeshift camps, presenting new challenges for social distancing. She says Kenya is already facing the effects of climate change with Lake Victoria reaching current levels not seen since the 1950s and Lake Naivasha reaching levels previously seen in 1961. 

In neighboring Somalia, nearly 1 million people in central Somalia have now been affected by flooding, displacing 400,000 according to the UN, who are warning of possible disease outbreaks due to overcrowding in temporary shelters. The flash floods have struck agricultural centers which are still recovering from floods last year, which displaced more than 500,000 people. 

Save the Children said climate changes in East Africa have contributed to the rains and floods that have displaced nearly half a million people across Burundi, Rwanda, Djibouti, Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia, Uganda and Tanzania, putting them at greater risk of contracting the novel coronavirus.