{"id":31977,"date":"2016-11-11T10:48:52","date_gmt":"2016-11-11T10:48:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.climatechangenews.com\/?p=31977"},"modified":"2016-11-11T17:03:25","modified_gmt":"2016-11-11T17:03:25","slug":"africa-flying-blind-as-continent-tips-into-climate-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.climatechangenews.com\/2016\/11\/11\/africa-flying-blind-as-continent-tips-into-climate-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"Africa flying blind as continent tips into climate crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"

A lack of data on African climate is slowing efforts to prepare for extreme weather, according to a new report which fills some of the gaps in Africa\u2019s regional climate science.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Scientific evidence is the foundation of robust adaptation policies that tackle water management, energy and food security, the study says. Without it, the climate impacts that are already plunging Africa into a humanitarian crisis are poised to get much worse.<\/p>\n

But patchy weather records, most of which lay abandoned in meteorological offices and are unlikely to ever be digitised, make the African climate system among the planet\u2019s least understood.<\/p>\n

#<\/span>Marrakech<\/span>\u00a0mail:<\/strong>\u00a0sign up here for your daily\u00a0#<\/span>COP22<\/span>\u00a0update<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The study, produced by the Future Climate For Africa initiative, a joint program of the UK\u2019s Department for International Development (DFID) and Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), finds that while Africa is poised to get hotter and its weather more erratic, most government departments are only planning short term, therefore failing to respond to slow onset environmental changes.<\/p>\n

“It is difficult to model through computers, which makes predictions of future rainfall under climate change challenging,” said\u00a0John Marsham, one of the authors at the University of Leeds, in the UK.<\/p>\n

Although scientists know that both dry spells and heavy rainfall are likely to increase, whether some regions will get wetter or drier remains unclear.<\/p>\n

Marsham also said that poor funding and the fact that the data are rarely shared with the scientific community are deepening the crisis.<\/p>\n

\u201cLong term decisions that do not account for climate change risk serious negative impacts\u201d Marsham said. \u201cWater supply, irrigation and drainage infrastructure built now need to be designed for the water availability, water needs and flood occurrence of the coming decades, as well as the present.\u201d<\/p>\n