Uncertainty reduction in Models for Understanding Development Applications
UMFULA is a project which focuses on climate variability and change on 5 to 40 year timescales in southern and central Africa. It aims to address the causes of climate projection uncertainty through extensive process-based model evaluation. UMFULA is a component of the Future Climate for Africa research programme, jointly funded by the UK Department for International Development and the Natural Environment Research Council. Its focus is not only to advance scientific knowledge and predictive ability, but also to better integrate science into longer-term decision making and risk management.
Thus far the climate science at Oxford has a particular focus on
- the structure of water vapour transport over central Africa in both reanalysis and coupled climate models,
- the definition of the Angola Low, its causes and representation in coupled models,
- tropical-temperate cloud band dynamics, their links to El Nino and La Nina and their representation in coupled climate models and high resolution (c4km grid spacing) nested models.
We turn to work on the simulation of these features in future decades in the next step.
Contact
Emma Howard
Rachel James
Wilfried Pokam
African Climate Research - University of Oxford 