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A model for improving climate services in Africa

Mike Norton/IRI
Ethiopia's National Meteorology Agency has launched a new online climate service based on 30 years of rainfall and temperature data for the entire country, which can be accessed at the click of a button. This is unprecedented in terms of scale and accessibility anywhere in Africa. IRI scientists who worked on the project say that the Ethiopian experience is a template for providing customizable data for agriculture, water, health and other sectors across the continent. Read the full story.


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Making Climate Information Work for Agricultural Development

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In a guest essay published in World Politics Review, IRI researcher James Hansen outlines key steps for improving climate information systems so they can be useful to decision makers in agriculture and other sectors. Building new weather stations would increase observational capacity, he writes, but new infrastructure can’t address gaps in the historical climate record. For that, we need to rescue and digitize older paper archives, some of which may be located in former colonial powers. We also need to blend in data from remote-sensing satellites in places where that’s feasible. Access his full write-up via the Climate Change and Food Security web site.



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Climate Services: Power in Numbers
Many countries and organizations are already investing in climate services, says IRI’s Steve Zebiak. Until recently, what has been missing is a central platform for capturing experiences and sharing best practices. Enter the Climate Services Partnership, an informal alliance of climate information providers, users and others who want to advance the state of climate services around the world. Zebiak explains the new partnership in the last of a series of video interviews with climate and development experts.



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Helping Farmers in the Sahel
Our partners at CCAFS also have a summary of our joint efforts to bring weather information to farmers in the Sahel, where extreme weather and climate events could be detrimental to agricultural production. This post features an interview with Robert Zougmoré, who leads the CCAFS West Africa Regional Program, in which he talks about coping with climate variability and change in West Africa.



Health and Climate
Looking for updates from the health and climate community? You’ll definitely want to download the latest issue of our Climate Information for Public Health Action (CIPHA) Newsletter. It comes in three flavors: English, French and Spanish!


IRI IN THE NEWS

Study links African drought to Pacific sea temperature. (SciDev.net). view

Weather Journal: A Less Warm End to an Unusual Week.
(The Wall Street Journal). view

A seasonal outlook for tornadoes?
(EarthSky). view


CURRENT SEASONAL RAINFALL FORECAST

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The International Research Institute for Climate and Society was established as a cooperative agreement between
the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Program Office and Columbia University.
It is part of The Earth Institute, Columbia University.