opinion
A lack of weather stations in Africa and other parts of the Global South leaves millions of people without warning of impending extreme weather events. What is needed is funding for equipment and early warning systems to reduce damage and save lives.
In early May, heavy rains caused massive flooding and hundreds of landslides around Lake Kivu, on the border between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), killing at least 600 people. Floods flooded while many people were asleep, displacing thousands of people, destroying water infrastructure and damaging productive farmland.
Floods are one of the deadliest natural disasters around the world, but flood-related deaths are not evenly distributed. It occurs most frequently in places without weather data or warning systems, most of which are in the Global South. Although rainfall around Lake Kivu this spring was extremely high, it was the lack of warming that turned this weather phenomenon into a humanitarian disaster.
To avoid similar disasters in the future, countries in Africa and other parts of the world need funding for early warning systems, weather stations and climate modeling. Such investments will benefit people around the world.
In 2015, I was a member of an international science initiative that studies extreme weather events to assess whether and to what extent anthropogenic climate change affects the intensity and likelihood of specific weather events. Co-founded World Weather Attribution. Most of our studies on flooding have found that, as expected, climate change has made rainfall events more intense.
While the United States and the European Union combined have 636 weather radar stations for a population of 1.1 billion, Africa, with a population of 1.2 billion, has only 37.
But when I looked into the deadly floods in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo this June, my organization fell short. The reason is that large parts of Africa do not have functional weather stations or sufficiently dense weather stations to record daily measurements such as rainfall, temperature, humidity, barometric pressure, wind strength and direction. This is because the local network does not exist. We couldn't find enough data about when, where, and how much rain falls around Lake Kivu.
According to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), there are 636 weather radar stations in the United States and the European Union for a population of 1.1 billion, but Africa, with a population of 1.2 billion, has only 37, and they are unevenly distributed across the country. I am. Continent. WMO also notes that around 60 percent of Africa's population is „not covered by early warning systems to combat extreme weather events and climate change.“ Weather stations on the continent are often far enough apart that the data they collect has limited use, and many are in need of repair. In fact, only one in five African weather stations met WMO reporting standards in 2019, and the number of functioning weather stations in Africa has declined in recent decades due to lack of maintenance.
Early warning of an impending disaster gives people the opportunity to seek shelter or evacuate. Let's compare Hurricane Ida, which occurred in the United States in 2021, and Tropical Cyclone Idai, which occurred in eastern Africa in 2019. Although both were Category 4 storms, Ida's death toll was over 1,000, while Ida's death toll was less than 100. Early warning was the big difference between her two disasters. „While U.S. residents were warned to evacuate before Hurricane Ida made landfall, Cyclone Idai caught African residents by surprise,“ the scientists wrote. Nature.
In September, a lack of early warning and evacuation planning in Libya, combined with poor infrastructure, caused heavy rains to cause massive flooding and the collapse of two dams, killing more than 4,300 people. (Our global climate attribution study found that rainfall that caused dam failures was at least 50 times more likely to be caused by human-induced climate change.) We must also be able to respond, but without early warning we cannot even begin to prepare for proactive action.
Researchers from the Rwanda Meteorological Agency are working together to understand what happened in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo last spring. our research They looked at data from a weather station on the east side of Lake Kivu. They identified heavy rains that fell in five districts in Rwanda between 8pm on May 2 and 9am on May 3 as the direct cause of the dramatic flooding in Koto.
However, flooding on the western side of the lake in the Democratic Republic of Congo had been reported in late April, when Rwanda's stations had not recorded significant rainfall. Also, there is no possibility that the flooding that occurred in the Democratic Republic of Congo on May 4th and May 5th is related to rainfall measurements in Rwanda. It is believed that heavy rain fell in this part of the DRC, but since none of DRC's few weather stations are near Lake Kivu, it is impossible to say exactly what happened. (Satellite data for this region is not very useful; none of the events identified in the data are comparable in scale, time, or geographic scope to those observed in Rwanda.) Deadly and destructive Although the impact is clear, the events that led to this outcome remain a mystery.
Investing in early warning systems in Africa will save lives. Just 24 hours' advance notice of a hazardous event can reduce damage by 30%.
The impact of such scarce weather data is serious. For example, we can't build infrastructure that can withstand flooding if we don't know what causes it in the first place. If the weather is not reliably recorded or available for research (either because it is not digitized or freely available to researchers, but is sold by cash-strapped governments to private customers), the weather The model cannot be adjusted. And without accurate models, meteorologists can't make accurate predictions or warn people about upcoming extreme events, and they can't build better climate models. Such models rely on good representation from tropical regions, but such data from large parts of Africa are currently lacking. Therefore, all climate predictions are affected.
Without reliable data, researchers cannot understand how the weather is changing on a rapidly warming planet. And without knowing what „normal“ weather is like, we don't know what is „abnormal.“ The lack of high-quality data also impedes attribution research that impacts how policy makers, organizations, and individuals understand and respond to weather and climate-related risks. The absence of an investigation into the causes also means that African countries can claim for damages from climate change and lose money from the newly established (not yet operational) United Nations Loss and Damage Fund, which aims to compensate developing countries for climate-related damages. It may become more difficult to obtain financial aid. change.
A girl collects artificial flowers from the debris of Cyclone Idai in Beira, Mozambique, in March 2019.
Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP (via Getty Images)
Meteorological observations alone cannot save lives, but without them we cannot understand the past or plan for the future. And there is no delay. Not recording daily weather means that more important data is missing. Africa needs long-term investments to develop climate science programs, improve local meteorological expertise, maintain weather stations, digitize weather records, and share data more freely. This research will help guide adaptation planning and advance both climate science and causal research, providing evidence of climate impacts already affecting the continent.
Investing in early warning systems in Africa will save lives. According to the Global Commission on Adaptation, just 24 hours' notice of an impending dangerous event can reduce damage by 30%. WMO says investing just $800 million in such systems in developing countries could prevent losses. $3 billion to $16 billion Every year.
We may never know the exact meteorological history of the Lake Kivu disaster or how climate change contributed to it, but we are certain that more extreme rain events will occur in the future. Investing in Africa should be a matter of historical justice. The developed world, the Global North, must take responsibility for the effects of colonization and climate change. But it's also a matter of pure self-interest. Climate is a global system, and continuing to ignore important parts of it will lead to worsening climate and weather predictions everywhere.