The sixth Foundational Climate Prediction Training Workshop for ICPAC Member States forecasters kicked off on Monday, November 13, 2023, at ICPAC offices in Nairobi, Kenya. The two-week workshop brings together 17 National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHS) forecasters from national met agencies in the Greater Horn of Africa.
The workshop’s primary objectives include providing knowledge in foundational seasonal prediction science, understanding critical drivers of climate variability, appreciating the dynamics of ensemble prediction systems, evaluating their performance, acquainting participants with essential data sources, tools, and technologies utilized in seasonal climate forecasting, and developing skills to interpret, analyze, and apply climate forecast outputs for early warning systems.
The workshop was organized with the support of the United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) under the Africa Regional Climate and Nature Programme’s (ARCAN) WISER-Africa, in partnership with EU-funded projects, including Coproduced of Climate Services for East Africa (CONFER) and Intra-ACP Climate Services and Related Applications (ClimSA).
The training is facilitated by ICPAC and CONFER (https://confer-h2020.eu/) scientists from the UK Met Office, the Norwegian Computing Center, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
CONFER aims to enhance the capacity of ICPAC to develop improved climate services in the water and energy, agriculture, and food security sectors based on co-production methods and advances in numerical modeling, statistics, and machine learning tools.
The workshop will cover topics of innovative approaches developed under the CONFER and other projects, including multi-model seasonal forecast probabilistic rainy season onset predictions and seasonal forecasts evaluation tool (SeaVal).