Good day 

Welcome to the quarterly FCFA Internal Update. In this update:

We would like to extend our thanks to everyone who participated in the FCFA Mid-term conference. 103 participants joined in Cape Town for stimulating and thought provoking exchanges. Please take a look at the great photo narrative of the event, compiled by Gregor Röhrig (you'll be sure to find a picture of yourself). We would also appreciate if you can take 5 minutes to complete the feedback form to help us learn and improve the next conference.

All presentations and posters have been uploaded to the password protected conference page. You can access the resources with the (case sensitive) password "CapeTown2017".

The conference report is currently being compiled and we ask all parallel sessions leads, capstone output champions, and breakout group rapporteurs to submit outstanding notes. We are aiming to share the final conference report by mid October.

We have also posted an updated spreadsheet with the contact details of all FCFA-affiliated researchers and practitioners on the Internal Resources page. We ask support from consortia coordinators to ensure that all the information for the respective consortia is complete and up to date.

The CCKE Unit

The Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) is a five-year £1.5 billion funding stream, which forms part of the UK's commitment to support cutting-edge research that addresses the problems faced by developing countries.

GCRF has recently launched a funding call, inviting proposal from eligible UK research organisations to establish and lead a number of Interdisciplinary Research Hubs to address intractable challenges faced by developing countries. The Collective Fund aims to “incorporate new collaboration and partnerships in order to redefine how we approach development challenges in innovative, transformative and inter-disciplinary ways”. The application process has three key deadlines:

1. Intention to Submit Survey (ITS): 29th September 2017
2. Submission of Outline proposals: 9th November 2017
3. Submission of full proposals (by invitation only): May 2018 (exact date TBC)

The Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation (ESPA) programme will host a webinar for researchers based in the global South with the purpose of explaining the opportunities provided by the GCRF calls and particularly the forthcoming GCRF Collective Fund call. Webinar registration has closed, but the webinar will be recorded and made available shortly afterwards, along with a set of FAQs. 

Africa Climate Change Leadership Programme: Call for Application
 The Africa Climate Leadership Program (AfriCLP) is a grants awards program that recognizes and incentivizes exemplary individuals and organizations to build leadership capacity in response to climate change. 

The program will address climate change adaptation research, policy challenges and practical climate solutions. The Programme is funded by IDRC and managed by the University of Nairobi and the Institute of Resource Assessment (IRA) at the University of Dar es Salaam. The program aims to build on past research to achieve sustainability and impact at scale.

The program will target exceptional mid-level to senior researchers as well as policy advisors/analysts and practitioners who have the drive and potential to become leaders in their field, allowing them to develop and test their ideas that can scale and strengthen their leadership capacity. To find out more on eligibility, click here

Submission: 30^th September 2017
Notification: 31^ST  October 2017
Workshop: November 2017.
Contact Details
Email address: mnjue@uonbi.ac.ke
www.africlp.or.ke

The HyCRISTAL consortium has produced it's first public newsletter. The newsletter will be shared biannually and goes out to project partners and stakeholders. This edition includes an overview of the consortium as well as current work and recent publications. 

The breakfast meeting was the culmination of a three-day visit to Lusaka, Zambia by FRACTAL members, which included a one-day training on climate science and the impacts of climate change on water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) in Lusaka, and a learning lab. The team has produced a video of the event which shows the deep engagement and commitment of the City of Lusaka. 



 

 

A new sudy by AMMA-2050 shows that global warming is responsible for a tripling in the frequency of extreme West African Sahel storms observed over the past 3 decades.  Meso-scale Convective Systems (MCS) intensification is linked to increasingly hot conditions in the Sahara desert resulting from man-made greenhouse gas emissions. (Taylor et al. 2017)

Increased ice sheet melting in the Artic could lead to further drying in the African Sahel, and disrupt future agriculture and livelihoods. This is according to a study led by scientists from the Institut Pierre Simon Laplace in France and involving several researchers taking part in FCFA’s AMMA-2050 consortium. Scientists used climate, ice-sheet, and agro-ecological models to test how melting ice sheets’ disturbance of major ocean currents can in turn affect agriculture and, by extension, migration in the Sahel.

The West African Sahelian region is a well-known climate change hot-spot due to persistent high temperatures and occurrence of extreme events. The region is also highly dependent on agriculture, which remains the most important sector in terms of employment and an important contributor to GDP. Given that farming in the region is largely rain-fed, the region is highly vulnerable to climate induced food insecurity; any projections of negative future changes in rainfall in the African Sahel region would be worrying. The FCFA research projects that partial melt of Greenland ice sheets can induce a drastic decrease of West African monsoon rainfall. For the full news and academic article, click here. (Defrance et al. 2017)

AMMA-2050 researchers have successfully shown that rainfall is skillfully predicted on inter-annual and multi-year timescales (5years). The study also investigates the driving mechanisms. The results will improve understanding and forecasting of Sahel drought, an important element in developing adaptation strategies in a changing climate.(Sheen et al. 2017)

A new study on urban ground water quality vulnerability due to anthropogenic contamination across sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) found that a combination of limited waste management and high intrinsic vulnerability in many regions render urban aquifers highly impacted by faecal and chemical loading, posing a clear health risk to users. High-intensity rainfall events pose a risk to shallow and poorly protected groundwater sources, especially for unimproved dug wells and springs. (Lapworth et al., Hydrogeol J. 2017)

 

A study using HadGEM2-ES coupled climate model has  investigated tropical response to cooling of the Southern Hemisphere extratropics and adjustment of inter-hemispheric albedo to understand the impact of reducing a longstanding extra tropical climate model bias. The study shows that simplified corrections, which do not correct the underlying biases in the physical processes, such as convective-dynamical coupling in the tropics, are unable to yield substantial improvements in the representation of the tropics. (Hawcroft, M., Haywood, J.M., Collins, M. et al. Clim Dyn. 2017) 

A perspective article on detection and attribution of human influence on regional precipitation considers how new methods of analysis can be applied for detection and attribution of regional changes in precipitation by reflecting on how current models and observations can best be utilized to provide robust view of anthropogenic change in regional precipitation. It argues that while observations and models are continuously improving and detection and attribution analyses should take advantage of such advances, innovative methods for analysing the available observations and models could yield important additional information to inform societies and policymakers about the nature of changing precipitation at local spatial scales. (Sarojini, et al. 2016)

The provision of climate information via websites is commonplace for accessing projections and impact information. However, users of climate information rarely encounter easy to use interfaces that provide robust and relevant information for their needs. This can lead to real world consequences that run counter to what the websites are aiming to achieve. A new FRACTAL study explores a sample of climate information websites (CIW) to draw out key issues for consideration in broader CIW development. (Hewitson, et a. 2017)

Scientists at UMFULA have authored a paper that explores the use of an alternative method that better represents rainfall relationships in climate models. The process of using moisture flux convergence in constraining the rainfall in global climate models could create a better understanding of Congo rainfall climatology and lead to more robust climate projections in the future. (Creese, A.  & Washington, R. 2016)

A new FRACTAL study shines light on the newly designed framework for facilitating the uptake of climate information into decision-making. The Co-exploration framework allows users and producers of science to work together in an equitable framework to co-explore ideas such as the urban decision-making space. The study draws on a series of workshops held amongst multi-disciplinary teams, highlighting the process and lessons learned. (Steynor, A. et al. 2016)

 

Rwanda has made significant progress in financing local green growth initiatives. However, integrating climate risks into project design remains a challenge. SouthSouthNorth (SSN), under Future Climate For Africa (FCFA), is assisting Rwanda’s national climate and environment fund (FONERWA) to ensure that green growth projects consider the risks and opportunities that climate change presents. This blog by Julio Araujo and Jean-Pierre Roux explores the nature of the this support, as well as the varous challenges it looks to overcome.