German-Ethiopian SDG Graduate School CLIFOOD – Subproject: Seasonal forecast of weather extremes for improving food security

The Horn of African economy and food production is highly dependent on rain-fed agriculture and pastoral system. Therefore the region is vulnerable for the weather fluctuations and weather induced extreme events, namely extreme anomalies in the seasonal rainfall. Precipitation seasonality is complex in East Africa because of largescale climatic drivers (e.g., the ITCZ) and regional factors such as the presence of lakes, topography, and the maritime influence. This influences amount, distribution, onset and cessation of the precipitation and the occurrence weather extreme events.  A reliable prediction of rainfall in advance of the rainy season would have enormous social and economic benefits to the countries dependent on rain-fed agriculture. However, current global seasonal forecast systems like the Ensemble Prediction System (EPS) of the ECMWF are of too a coarse resolution to forecast high-impact weather at local scales and it is common to downscale over regions of interest using different downscaling methods. Here a convection-permitting ensemble of seasonal simulations with the Weather research and Forecast (WRF) model downscaling the EPS seasonal forecast of 2018 over the Horn of Africa is evaluated with respect to the its skill to simulate precipitation, temperature and humidity. Thereafter simulation added value to enhance farmers agricultural practice optimization, risk assessment and early warning systems is analysed.

This subproject is part of the CLIFOOD project which is part of the Food Security Center.