“Today, weather information is a major issue. If we have less rain, we are told to grow crops that are drought-tolerant and mature early, like green grams. They are good, drought-tolerant and fetch a competitive price," says farmer Jonnes Ellijah Mlegwah at his farm outside Voi in Kenya. (Photo: Ingebjørg Kårstad/NRC)

Strengthening climate services

Published 01. Nov 2018|Updated 24. Aug 2022

NORCAP focuses on increasing people’s access to weather and climate information and better enable vulnerable communities to adapt to climate change across Africa.

Extreme weather events and climate change put people’s lives at risk. It drives hunger and displaces entire communities. The ability to predict, warn and prepare for climate-related events such as floods and droughts is essential to protect and increase the resilience of communities.

Climate services combine information about upcoming weather, climate change and advice tailored to specific sectors and users.

Most countries in Africa do not have good enough weather and climate services that can help decision-makers take necessary action to reduce the impact of climate change. This includes lack of resources and expertise. The biggest challenge is to ensure that reliable climate information is processed and communicated in a way that enables individuals and communities to react before disaster strikes. For this purpose, climate information has to be accurate, timely, accessible, and understandable for all recipients - from the farmer to the policymaker.

Through our climate services project, started in 2015, we discovered that there are too few weather stations and a lack of interpretated data. Information is often shared too late, in a technical language, without relevant advice on how best to respond to the information. This hampers people’s ability to prepare for potential disasters and adapt to long-term implications of climate change.

We must strengthen the whole climate services value chain to better protect people’s lives and build climate resilience.

Aissatou Ndaw is the leader of a local women's group called "Sisters United" in Kaffrine, Senegal. She is also a focal point for the national meteorological services (ANACIM), and receives weather forecasts that she distributes to her network. (Photo: Fernanda Baumhardt/NORCAP) — Understanding the needs of affected populations is vital to build climate resilient communities. Local communities are dependent on timely, accurate and understandable climate information in order to protect their livelihoods and prepare for challenging weather events. Watch and learn how people in Kenya and Senegal would like to prepare for future climate changes.

NORCAP’s impact

We strengthen institutions and partners’ ability to provide accurate and timely climate information.

We include local communities in the development of timely and accurate climate and weather information and make sure they have access to the information.

We support institutions’ work to better finance and sustain capacities to deliver early warning alerts and climate information.

We provide climate services expertise to national meteorological and hydrological centres, UN organisations and regional climate centres. This includes meteorology and hydrology, climate data modelling, analysis, communication, community engagement, capacity building and more.

In 2023, we had 41 climate services experts working with 11 partners in nine countries to strengthen climate action across Africa.

Our main donors include the European Union, the Norwegian Agency Development Cooperation, the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Met Norway and the UK Met Office.

Our approach

We achieve the greatest impact through partnerships. That is why we collaborate with a wide range of national and international partners. We focus on creating, strengthening and implementing climate services, including essential weather information, across Africa.

From the local to the global level, NORCAP aims to increase the capacity of institutions to deal with natural hazards and send out early warnings to communities. This is key to reducing the impacts of climate change. Our focus is to support vulnerable communities, to make sure they have access to useful and relevant climate information.

Clement Mangi is both a traditional forecaster and a farmer. For the past years he has registered below normal levels of rainfall. Many farmers rely on traditional forecasting methods for weather information about the upcoming season. By including traditional forecasting in the production of scientific forecasts, climate information services aim to gain the trust and respect of local communities. (Photo: Ingebjørg Kårstad/NRC) — Many farmers rely on traditional forecasting methods for weather information about the upcoming season. By including traditional forecasting in the production of scientific forecasts, climate information services aim to gain the trust and respect of local communities. (Photo: Ingebjørg Kårstad/NRC)

What we do

Strengthening national capacity

Robust institutions are crucial for creating necessary preparedness plans at both national and local levels. To make this happen, we need the ability to create localised weather forecasts, update the infrastructure for weather and climate observation and develop climate information using existing data.

NORCAP works with national meteorological institutions and regional climate centres to strengthen their capacity in developing, sharing and using climate services and early warning systems. This includes improving data collection and management, weather and climate forecasting, impact-based predictions and effective communication of climate services.

Improving climate communication

Effective communication of climate information is essential for farmers and fishers to plan their activities and deal with climate-related challenges. To achieve this, we involve local communities and other users in creating climate information. This way, we can customise the information to be more useful and easier for everyone to understand.

Our focus is on disaster risk reduction, agriculture and food security. We make sure that the people who use the information are involved through surveys, group discussions, interviews and assessments. This helps us improve how we provide climate information and ensure it meets everyone’s needs.

Accessing climate finance

Many countries and organisations lack sufficient funding to act on the climate information they receive. To address this, we need to provide better access to forecast-based financing, climate finance and insurance. This is especially important for countries that are vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.

We support partners in fundraising and developing programmes related to disaster risk reduction, forecast-based financing, climate insurance initiatives and putting national plans for climate services into action.

Strengthening Climate Services for Enhanced Climate Resilience

The overall objective of this projec is to ensure that NORCAP’s institutional partners are better able to respond to climate change and increase and strengthen resilience efforts for the communities they serve.

By collaborating with relevant stakeholders, we strengthen the entire climate services process and provide targeted assistance to organisations at national, regional and global levels.

The project focuses on building knowledge, delivering weather and climate information and supporting climate resilience efforts.

The key partners under this project is ACMAD, ICPAC, WFP, UNDP, WHO, national meteorological and hydrological services in East and West Africa, including SMA in Sudan, ANAM in Burkina Faso, DCCMS in Malawi, DMN in Niger, and others.

CONFER

CONFER is an EU-funded research project focused on climate adaptation in East Africa. The project aims to co-develop dedicated climate services for the water, energy and food security sectors together with stakeholders and users. These services will help them plan for and adapt to seasonal climate fluctuations.

CONFER uses statistical and machine learning tools to improve the accuracy of weather forecasting in the region, to reduce the impact of extreme weather.

The project is coordinated by NORCE, which is based in Bergen, Norway. The main African partner is the IGAD Climate Prediction and Applications Centre (ICPAC) in Nairobi, Kenya. NORCAP leads capacity building efforts under this project.

ARCS

NORCAP is leading the Agricultural Resilience through Climate Services (ARCS) Consortium, partnering with Norwegian Research Centre AS (NORCE), Development Fund and Chr. Michelsen Insitute (CMI).

This five-year project aims to enhance smallholder farmers’ resilience and food security in Malawi and Ethiopia amid climate change. This is done by improving access to reliable climate information services, helping farmers adjust agricultural decisions. It focuses on the smallholder farmers’ needs and addresses gaps, seeking to produce timely, localised and sustainable forecasts and agricultural advisories.

The inception stage of the project will focus on in-depth understanding of local institutional and decision-making contexts, needs, capacities, and constraints for producing climate information services that matter to farmers.

How we work

Building technical capacity

We have extensive experience in working together with partners to strengthen the abilities of partner institutions. We assess the existing capacity, provide tailored expertise and create plans for sustainability, as well as developing exit strategies from start to finish.

Influencing policy and implementation

We work with regional organisations, such as the Intergovernmental Authority on Development’s Climate Prediction and Applications Centre (ICPAC), African Centre of Meteorological Application for Development (ACMAD) and others. We also cooperate with the UN, including the UN Development Programme Resilience Hub. Our goal is to develop tools and facilitate collaboration among local and national stakeholders involved in climate services and resilience work in Africa.

Working with communities

Local communities and users play a crucial role in climate services. Trust is key – without trust, we will not be able to improve climate services. Therefore, we prioritise working with communities, where the communities themselves define their needs and how we should work to meet these needs.