Stakeholders Support Creation of a Knowledge Exchange Partnership to Improve Climate Services

4 May 2018
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United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (Addis Ababa)

Djibouti — Under the weather and climate information services for Africa (WISER) policy and enabling environment component, the African Climate Policy Centre (ACPC), in partnership with African Regional Climate Centres (RCCs), Regional Economic Communities (RECs) and WISER East Africa, on Monday convened a side event at the 49th Greater Horn of Africa Climate Outlook Forum (GHACOF) to present the concept of a knowledge exchange partnership among African RCCs.

The objective of the collaboration is to provide a platform for African RCCs to deliberate on a process for producing guidelines, procedures and best practices for organizing impactful RCOFs in Africa.

Regional Climate Outlook Forums (RCOFs) are an innovative process initiated by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Climate Information and Prediction Services (CLIPS) project in collaboration with National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs), regional institutions and other international organizations. In Africa, the first series of RCOFs were conducted in 1996.

The event was attended by representatives from African Centre of Meteorological Application for Development (ACMAD), Southern African Development Community - Climate Services Centre (SADC-CSC), IGAD Climate Prediction and Application Centre (ICPAC), ECOWAS and East African Community who presented best practices from their regions in formulating consensus climate forecasts, organizing RCOFs and user outreach, forecast uptake and user feedback.

Participants at the event welcomed the creation of the partnership, noting that harmonization of RCOFs approaches will enable greater efficiency and effectiveness of RCOFs in alleviating loss of lives and property, and contribute to development efforts.

This is in line with the rationale of RCOFs to avail climate information for application in climate sensitive socioeconomic sectors for decision support, resilience building and sustainable development (ICPAC, 2016).

Although RCOFs were originally established to focus on seasonal prediction, several RCCs have extended the platform to address increased capacity to adapt to climate change.

Further information on African RCOFs is available at http://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/wcp/wcasp/RCC-Africa.html, and on WISER at https://www.uneca.org/wiser.

Read the original article on UNECA.

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