Setting up a West Africa Climate Assessment & Dataset
Given the increasing importance of climate and climate change for many sectors of society, international efforts exist to improve the provision of local climate and weather information in a way that assists decision making by individuals and organizations. Hereto in many countries climate services have been or are being developed, that provide data and information on weather and climate as observed in the past and projected for the future, and help users to retrieve data and information that fit their specific needs.
To this end, the World Meteorological Organization, the World Bank, and several other international organizations have recently launched the Climate Risk & Early Warning Systems (CREWS) initiative, which supports Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States improving their resilience to climate change and extreme weather.
KNMI is partner in a CREWS project for West Africa, which main objective is an operational severe weather, flood and climate forecast system for this region, underpinned by on-going observations and continuously updated historical data. KNMI will investigate the status and performance of the observation networks and data archives, and will set up a climate service for West Africa that is similar to KNMI’s European Climate Assesment & Dataset.