Over the past 50 years, climate change has driven a rapid and alarming rise in global temperatures. This additional energy in the atmosphere impacts weather systems, intensifying floods, droughts, and heatwaves. To address these extremes, we must understand what is causing them and how continued warming will affect similar events in the future.
However, there is a lack of reliable data across the continent of Africa to track these changes.
Dr Callum Munday Associate Professor in Physical Geography and Climate Science and his team from Oxford University, along with the University of Nairobi (UoN), Kenya’s Meteorological Department (KMD), and the University of Cape Town (UCT) released 350 weather balloons in Nairobi and across various location in Kenya to measure the evolution of winds, temperature, pressure, and humidity in the transition from dry to a very wet rainy season.
Dr Munday explains: “So far, much of the scientific effort aimed at understanding the rainy season has focused on interpreting the outputs from climate and weather forecast models. These models are the fundamental tools scientists use to understand floods and droughts, but for their results be trusted, they need to be tested against real world observations. Unfortunately, in much of East Africa these observations are missing. Without these observations, scientists are effectively working with one hand tied behind their back.
These observations will be used to test and improve computer climate models which we use to project future climate changes. The aim is to build confidence in these climate models and, in doing so, provide more reliable information to policy makers faced with difficult and costly decisions over how to adapt to climate change.”
African Mountain Research Foundation is supporting Dr Callum Munday and his team’s climate modelling work by sharing our high elevation data.
