Nick Kennedy in SciDev.net: Researchers unravelling the complexities of the West African monsoon say they are set to bring major agricultural and health benefits to people in the region — despite setbacks caused by terrorist threats and wars in the Sahel region.The African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analysis (AMMA) programme, a consortium of over 400 researchers from 30 countries that was started 14 years ago, has gathered a wealth of new data about the West African monsoon from across the Sahel, and is now inspiring similar projects elsewhere in Africa.
The new dataset is enabling the researchers to improve climate prediction models for West Africa, which in turn will help to forecast farming success and disease outbreaks in the region. They are are now extending the project to coastal areas of West Africa.
Crop forecasts will be produced by the AGRHYMET (Agrometeorology, Hydrology and Meteorology) centre in Niger. The forecasts could allow the millions of people who depend on the monsoon for subsistence agriculture to make better-informed decisions.
For example, if farmers can be certain that the next season will be a drought, then they know it is not worth buying expensive fertiliser and seeds, says Richard Washington, a climate scientist at the University of Oxford, United Kingdom.
The scientists hope that AMMA will also help forecast health risks throughout West Africa because diseases such as meningitis and malaria are influenced by the monsoon, says Doug Parker, meteorology professor at the University of Leeds, United Kingdom, and a UK coordinator for AMMA. These forecasts are now being prepared in Burkina Faso and Senegal...
Kolel Hill in Burkina Faso, shot by Marco Schmidt, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license
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