Africa grapples with forecasting challenge as weather disasters loom

Flooding in N’Djamena, Chad

Published 12:28 PM ET, Friday November 15, 2024

N’Djamena: At Chad’s National Meteorological Agency, the hygrothermograph, which gauges humidity, is broken.

It’s amongst other pieces of dust-blown equipment meant to help the agency track weather patterns.

Much of Africa is in a similar situation, lacking reliable forecasts that are a keystone of disaster management as climate change makes extreme weather more frequent.

At COP29 climate talks on Wednesday (November 13), U.N. chief Antonio Guterres called for urgent action to overcome gaps in data and funding.

But the 2027 aim for universal protection by early warning systems appears particularly ambitious for Chad.

The agency’s deputy director, Hamid Abakar Souleymane said around 80% of the devices at this site didn’t work.

“To bridge the gap, that is, to balance the country in terms of stations, we need about 400 stations. Currently, we have 64 automatic stations, so we are well below demand. So, we need more stations, that’s all I can tell you. And we need funding.”

Chad has battled another season of devastating floods, with people like Josiane Allasra being displaced.

“We are hungry and don’t know where to shelter our children. There is no more shelter; all spaces are flooded. We have lost our sorrel, bean, and cereal crops. Everything is destroyed now because no one warned us about such a disaster. We are truly suffering.”

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said Africa, a continent of 1.5 billion people, has the world’s least developed weather observation network.

And being unprepared has deadly consequences.

It was reported that floods across Africa kill four times more people on average than in Europe and North America due to a lack of warning.