The South African Weather Service (SAWS) has announced its intention to scale up early warning systems for Southern Africa.
This is done via a project, managed from South Africa, which will introduce a king-sized testbed, as from the 1st of October 2024.
The significance of this action, is to improve the forecasting ability of meteorologists and disseminate relevant and potentially life-saving weather information to communities, in South Africa, Mozambique and Zambia.
SAWS has called the project by its acronym WISER, short for the Weather and Climate Services for Africa.
In a statement, SAWS said testbeds are a proven way of testing methodologies in real-life scenarios with measurable impact and in collaboration with the end users.
The Project is led by the UK Met Office, commissioned by the UK Government’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and supported by UK aid from the British people.
In addition, other partners are weather offices and disaster risk reduction offices, the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom (UK), the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, Kulima Integrated Development Solutions, Tyrsky Consulting, the Finnish Meteorological Institute, and the World Weather Research Programme of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO).
Speaking about this stride forward, Ishaam Abader, South African Weather Service (SAWS) Chief Executive Officer, said “South Africa must scale up its early warning systems. SAWS’s development of early warning systems is an important focus area. Our contribution to and partnership with WISER EWSA aligns with the international EW4All initiative. Early warning dissemination and communication becomes particularly important considering the complexities of South Africa’s 12 official languages.”
Abader also said “our early warning system endeavours are supported by the Impact-based Severe Weather Warning System. This introduced a welcome shift from traditional weather prediction to include the potential impact on people’s lives and property of weather events. It assists decision-makers in the disaster response process as well as other sectors, such as aviation and maritime.”
Prof Douglas Parker from the University of Leeds and Principal Investigator for the project, said, “The king-size testbed that starts on 1 October is an expansion of the original project plan. Initially, the project would have implemented only two intensive testbeds of two weeks each over the project’s 30-month lifespan.
However, after the successful completion of the first testbed in January/February 2024, in Zambia, with satellite testbeds in Mozambique and South Africa, our communities requested an extended testbed to ensure they have early warning of thunderstorms throughout the rainy season.”
The king-size’ testbed is expected run throughout the rainy seasons in Southern Africa, from October to April 2025.
For this intensive testbed, Mozambique will take the lead with South Africa and Zambia as satellites. Both will involve real-time testing of forecasting and nowcasting with community feedback on the correctness and accessibility of the message, allowing for constant improvement.
Picture: Tsunami siren warning loudspeakers, WMO