TRAINING WORKSHOP ON CLIMATE SERVICES FOR BUILDING CLIMATE RESILIENCE OF THE AGRICULTURE SECTOR IN AFRICA USING CLIMTAG

Agriculture is strongly dependent on weather, hence very vulnerable to weather variability and climatic changes. Climate change is expected to increase weather variability and enhance the vulnerability of already exposed regions, including those that are already warm and prone to drought. Rainfall patterns may shift leading to associated crop calendars and the timing of management activities.

Countries have expressed their requirements for customized climate information services to meet their needs for managing climate risks. Governments require climate change projections to better mainstream climate change impacts reduction interventions in agricultural policies and practices. They need to come up with notes,
briefs, and reports on national agricultural policy, with action plans and perspectives for a smart agriculture sector.

Currently, users in many LDC countries almost exclusively employ historical climate information based on meteorological station data, which are generally obtained from local sources. Unfortunately, these data are often highly scattered, irregular and fragmented, with a sparse geographic coverage, lacking coherence (e.g., in units,
formats, time increments) and quality control. It is hard for stakeholders to find their way through the data that are available for their area of interest. When historical climate data is available, this information is often incomplete or not adequate for use. Also, data continuity for the coming years are not always ensured.

In Africa where many people depend on smallholder farming for daily subsistence and food security tailored information about the past, present and future climate is very important. To assess the impact of climate change and design adaptation strategies in sectors like agriculture, climate information should be region-specific, reliable and easily accessible.
CLIMTAG, the CLimate InforMation Tool for AGriculture, aims to provide decision makers in the agricultural sector with operational climate information, for example about the start of the rainy season or the duration of a drought period. The web based tool operates at country level and visualizes past, present and future actionable climate information, allowing its users to assess the severity of upcoming climatic changes, design robust national adaptation measures (which can form part of National
Adaptation Plans and updates), or support applications for international climate finance.CLIMTAG uses temperature, precipitation and a variety of other climate data from past climate reconstruction (‘ERA5 reanalysis’) and future climate projections (‘CMIP5 projections’), delivered via the Copernicus Climate Data Store (CDS), to calculate operational agro-climatic indicators. These indicators have been defined in cooperation with local stakeholders (including experts active within National Meteorological Services, Departments of Agriculture and Research Centers). The CMIP5 climate projections are
bias-corrected to strengthen their consistency with the past observed climate. Based on orthographic information, the indicators are downscaled to a resolution of one kilometer to ensure practical applicability in the field.