African Desk

Seated, left to right: Amira Ebrahim (Egypt), Wassila Thiaw, Awatif Ebrahim (Egypt), Aaron Ntiranyibagira (Burundi), Lotfi Khammari (Tunisia); standing: Endalkachew Bekele (Ethiopia), Vadalamani Kumar (CPC).

For two decades, the National Weather Service has been providing support to African national meteorological services to develop capacity in weather and climate forecasting through a residency training program at the Climate Prediction Center's African Desk.  CPAESS has been providing support to this program ever since.   CPAESS partnered with NCEP to establish the African Desk initially by providing human resource support to run the desk.  As the African Desk expanded, CPAESS helped facilitate many of the scientific activities of the Desk.  In particular, CPAESS has been managing a visiting scientist program for the desk, as well as staffing some of the African Desk projects including support to the Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWSNET).  CPAESS also provided support to the African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analysis (AMMA) field campaign in 2006 in which the African Desk was engaged, providing forecast support to the campaign.  In addition, CPAESS provided travel support for the African Desk to scientists in Africa to participate in scientific meetings and conferences, including the Africa Climate Conference in Tanzania in 2013.

Reported by Wassila Thiaw, September 19, 2014