Intensive weather forecast testbed kicks off in Mozambique, South Africa, and Zambia

Pretoria, South Africa: As Mozambique and Madagascar continue to pick up the pieces following the devastation brought about by Tropical Cyclones Dikeledi and Chido over the last two months, a multidisciplinary team of meteorological experts will be gathering in Lusaka, Zambia, on 30 January 2025 for a week-long ‘testbed’ during which they will seek to improve forecasting efforts in southern Africa while disseminating relevant and life-saving weather forecasts and severe weather warnings to vulnerable communities.

Severe weather causes havoc

With heavy downpours and wind gusts that clocked speeds of up to 63 kilometres per hour, Dikeledi reportedly claimed nearly ten lives and left thousands of people displaced in both Madagascar and Mozambique earlier this month.

Around mid-December 2024, Chido, with gusty winds of more than 200 kilometres per hour, battered Mozambique, reportedly killing more than 100 people, and injuring over 800. Far more destructive than Dikeledi, Chido blew the roofs off many homes, leaving hundreds of thousands of people in distress.

Dikeledi and Chido were the latest in a series of disasters that underscored southern Africa’s status as a region susceptible to hazardous weather events, with hundreds of thousands of people and livelihoods put at risk every year. The region is expected to experience increased storms as climate change continues to take root.

Collaborating to enable early warnings

The multidisciplinary team, made up of meteorologists, scientists, economists, and user engagement specialists, is on their second intensive testbed in Zambia, with centres in South Africa and Mozambique as part of the Weather and Climate Information Services (WISER) programme’s Early Warnings for Southern Africa (EWSA) project.

About the testbed Testbeds are a proven way of assessing methodologies in real-life scenarios with measurable impact and in collaboration with the end users. The WISER EWSA project held southern Africa’s first testbed on nowcasting in early 2024, and scaled up ambition for the 2024–2025 rainy season. The intensive testbed, 30 January to 7 February, marks a period within a ‘king-size’ testbed that started in October 2024 and will conclude in April 2025. In contrast to the king-size testbed, when nowcasts are only issued in the case of extreme rainfall and feedback is initiated by community observers, during the intensive testbed, community observers will receive regular information throughout the day and push notifications requesting feedback as to the accuracy and accessibility of the information.

Being weather-prepared

Nowcasting is a detailed analysis and description of evolution of storms over the short term from 0 to 6 hours (as opposed to a daily, weekly or seasonal forecast).

Early warnings about severe weather events, such as heavy rain and thunderstorms, can help communities prepare in a way that saves lives and property. WISER EWSA supports the United Nations’ Early Warnings for All (EW4All) initiative, led by the World Meteorological Organization’s World Weather Research Programme, which aims to ensure that every person on Earth is protected from hazardous weather, water and climate events through early warning systems by 2027.

Necessity of getting it right

With increasing challenges of irregular rainfall, long droughts, and other weather events like heavy rainfall leading to flooding which disrupts – and threatens – lives and infrastructure, it is crucial to improve weather forecasts and ensure people have advanced warning when it matters.

“The WISER EWSA project targets disadvantaged urban communities while also strengthening meteorologists’ weather modelling and forecasting capabilities and capacity. The project collaborates extensively with the existing disaster risk reduction and community-based organisations, including people with disabilities, to respond to weather nowcast alerts in a timely manner and ensuring that nowcasts are easy to understand and reach the right people,” explains the Chief Executive Officer of the South African Weather Service and the country’s Permanent Representative with the World Meteorological Organisation, Mr Ishaam Abader.

He adds that several community members work with the researchers and forecasters on the project, with a view to ensuring tailor-made and relevant solutions for their communities.

“We have learnt many technology- and community engagement-related lessons during the project, even more so during the current king-size testbed. We hope to leverage these learnings and add to them throughout the imminent intensive testbed,” says Prof Douglas Parker from the University of Leeds and principal investigator for the project.

Key technical lessons learnt

On the technical side, Dr Itzel San Roman Pineda, testbed lead at the UK National Centre for Atmospheric Science at the University of Leeds, adds, “We have seen the meteorological services in the three countries – INAM (Mozambique), SAWS (South Africa), and ZMD (Zambia) – increasingly taking ownership of nowcasting processes, issuing nowcasts independently and expanding their reach beyond the initial project scope. This highlights the growing confidence and capability of forecasters in interpreting models and operationalising nowcasting.”

Another lesson concerns the significant challenge of effectively disseminating nowcasting messages. With severe storms developing rapidly, or changing their path without warning over the space of a couple of hours, it’s vital that messages and updates are sent quickly. This includes ensuring nowcasts are issued with enough lead time and clarity for users to take appropriate action. Diversifying communication channels (e.g. by combining digital platforms with traditional media such as radio) helps ensure broader coverage and accessibility. INAM in Mozambique, for example, has successfully expanded the reach of nowcasts nationally by disseminating them via WhatsApp, radio, TV, and SMS. Additionally, it has tailored communication to diverse audiences by translating messages into local languages.

Socioeconomic benefit

A significant observation includes that sustaining nowcasting processes during prolonged or recurring weather events is resource-intensive. Issues such as a lack of stable internet, power, and access to data hinder the efficiency of forecasters, whereas further down the value chain, low cost access to a variety of communication channels for both suppliers and users of warnings merits improvement. Developing business models and resource strategies, including human resources, that ensure long-term sustainability for nowcasting is critical.

To this end, the intensive testbed programme features a workshop discussing the preliminary estimates of the socioeconomic benefit potential associated with regular supply of EWSA-based warning services, and the costs of delivering a service which can realise those benefits.

Delivery of short-range forecasts and nowcasts needs (but currently lacks) sustainable business models in Africa and creating these will be a landmark for the continent.

Project partner, Dr Adriaan Perrels of Tyrsky Consulting in Finland, explains, “The WISER EWSA project will produce estimates of socioeconomic benefits of these warning services in the participating countries. In conjunction with the socioeconomic benefit estimation, the project also assesses options for resourcing of the (extra) cost of the concerned services throughout the entire value chain of forecasting, warning, preparing, and responding. We are investigating several – possibly complementary – options for resourcing the service provision in Zambia after the EWSA project ends.” 

Among others, the workshop targets high-level stakeholders such as the Zambian Ministry of Green Economy and the Environment, the University of Zambia, the World Bank, the African Development Bank, and the Ministry of Finance and National Planning.

Key community engagement insights

Dr Katharine Vincent, project user engagement lead at Kulima Integrated Development Solutions relates, “Volunteers in all three countries have been actively providing feedback on nowcasts to support verification. They have also been embracing the opportunity to raise awareness of weather and early warnings in their communities, putting up posters in public places and meeting with individuals (particularly persons with disability) and groups such as churches and schools.”

In Zambia and Mozambique, these voluntary roles have been aligned with the local disaster management committees to ensure that the new form of early warning is integrated with broader disaster risk reduction and disaster management efforts.

Methodology

WISER EWSA follows a co-production approach – improving the quality of weather and climate services by bringing together the producers and users of that information to ensure that the presentation and communication of that information encourage better use to reduce disaster risk.

“The overarching aim of the co-production process is to slowly but surely increase confidence, trust and legitimacy of weather information. Encouragingly, we have been steadily moving from what we encountered at the start of the project where community observers said they do not pay attention to weather forecasts as they are always the same, to where people now increasingly realise that the weather forecasts and nowcasts can help them to reduce weather-related risks to their lives and livelihoods,” Vincent concludes.