Improving climate and weather models for Africa

This Destination contributes directly to the Strategic Plan’s Key Strategic Orientations ‘Green transition’, ‘Digital transition’ and ‘A more resilient, competitive, inclusive and democratic Europe’.

In line with the Strategic Plan, the overall expected impact of this Destination is to contribute to the “Advancing science for a transition to a climate-neutral and resilient society”.

Expected impacts:

Research should contribute to closing major knowledge gaps on the changing climate together with their associated impacts and risks, on both society and nature. It should also help develop tools to support decision-makers in designing and implementing effective mitigation and adaptation actions at various time and spatial scales while properly accounting for synergies and trade-offs with other policy objectives, such as just transition, territorial cohesion and leaving no one behind.

The main impacts to be generated by topics under this Destination are:

1. Supporting climate action (both mitigation and adaptation) in Europe and globally, through advancing climate science and the knowledge base underpinning actionable solutions, to accelerate the transition to a climate-neutral, climate-resilient and prosperous society.
2. Closing key knowledge gaps related to climate change, thereby contributing substantially to key European and international assessments such as IPCC, IPBES, EUCRA, and other initiatives such as the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) and the Coordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) under the World Climate Research Programme.
3. Strengthening the European Research Area on climate change by boosting scientific excellence and capacity in an inclusive manner across the participating countries.
4. Maximising synergies between mitigation and adaptation and with other policy priorities such as biodiversity and ecosystem preservation and restoration, disaster-preparedness, digitalisation, circular economy, prosperity and competitiveness, strategic autonomy, security and resilience, just transition, and the Sustainable Development Goals by exploring co-benefits, trade-offs and potential unintended consequences of climate strategies and policy interventions.

Important components of climate science research are also addressed in other Clusters -particularly Cluster 6 – which addresses the climate-ocean-cryosphere-polar nexus and the climate-energy-land-food-water-biodiversity nexus. Efforts to foster synergies and complementarities across these research activities are strongly encouraged.

Expected Outcome:

Project results are expected to contribute to all of the following expected outcomes:

• Improved quality and performance of weather and climate models over Africa, tailored to the continent’s needs, enabling more effective adaptation actions and disaster risk response strategies, and informing the implementation of the international dimension of the EU Adaptation and Preparedness Union Strategies, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, the Nairobi Declaration and the Team Europe Initiative on Adaptation and Resilience in Africa^[1];
• Enhanced provision of weather predictions and climate projections that enable African communities to more effectively respond to the escalating impacts of climate change, contributing to the objectives of the AU-EU Partnership on Climate Change and Sustainable Energy^[2];
• African climate research is bolstered, supporting the development of the next generation of climate scientists. There is reduced reliance on external expertise, increased representation of African science and scientists in international bodies such as the IPCC and UNFCCC, and enhanced African contribution to global climate initiatives such as CMIP, CORDEX and ISIMIP.

Scope:

Africa is among the regions most severely affected by climate change, mostly due to high vulnerability and low adaptive capacity. While significant advancements in global weather and climate science have transformed resilience efforts elsewhere, their benefits in Africa remain to be harnessed, to unlock the continent’s ability to address climate challenges more effectively.

Actions should address critical knowledge gaps for improving weather and climate modelling for Africa in the context of changing climate, with focus on the understanding and representation of weather and climate dynamics in Africa at regional, interregional or continental scale. They should enhance models’ predictive skill and reduce uncertainties in key areas such as rainfall and extreme weather events. Actions should harness observational data to advance process-based understanding and model performance across various Earth System components (e.g. land, ocean, atmosphere). This includes improving data collection, assimilation and quality assurance practices, integration of local and rescued historical data to provide high-quality inputs for models. Actions are encouraged to leverage digital technologies, including AI/ML techniques, tools, and models as well as advances in high performance computing to achieve the topic’s goals.

The research should be performed in close cooperation and co-creation between African and European teams in a way to ensure relevance, acceptance and co-ownership of solutions by African stakeholders. Actions are also expected to contribute to local capacity-building and knowledge exchange to support competence growth and equip African researchers with the data, tools and expertise necessary to sustain future progress. Strong partnerships should be established between relevant institutions in both regions such as universities, research bodies, National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs) and African Regional Climate Centers (RCCs)^[3] to enable mutual learning and collaborations.

Synergies and complementarity should be sought with other relevant EU-supported initiatives on climate modelling and capacity development in Africa such as Regional Centres of Excellence related to the green transition^[4]. Additionally, actions should facilitate access of African researchers to cutting-edge European research infrastructures including supercomputing assets and data repositories to strengthen institutional and regional expertise and capacity.

All projects funded under this topic are strongly encouraged to collaborate and envisage clustering activities together and with other relevant projects in and outside of Horizon Europe.

[1] Climate Change Adaptation & Resilience - Africa | Capacity4dev

[2] https://research-and-innovation.ec.europa.eu/strategy/strategy-research-and-innovation/europe-world/international-cooperation/regional-dialogues-and-international-organisations/eu-africa-cooperation/partnership-climate-change-and-sustainable-energy-ccse_en

[3] Africa Regional Climate Centers | AFRI-RES

[4] About the Project | Africa Knowledge Platform