LaunchPAD: Priority on African Diagnostics
The LaunchPAD (Priority on African Diagnostics) project is funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) to create a Climate Model Evaluation Hub for Africa.
It is widely recognised that African societies are highly vulnerable to climate change, meanwhile climate models – the best tools available to investigate future climate – struggle to represent African regions. It has been difficult to see how African climate science could “catch up” with other regions.
A team of researchers from Oxford in the UK and African universities in Ghana, Cameroon, Kenya and South Africa together with the UK Met Office are building the Model Evaluation Hub, designed to deliver a legacy of improved modelling of African climate. The Hub connects African experts in weather and climate with climate modelling centres internationally, to jointly investigate how models represent African climate, and how this can be improved. The Hub develops software tools which can be automated across climate models, to quickly increase the understanding of how models behave over African regions.
This site showcases the first software tools and presents profiles of the fellowship program, early career researchers based at African universities.
Project updates and reports:
LaunchPAD Special Issue
The LaunchPAD team are working on a Special Issue for Climate Dynamics. 4 papers have been published, and 4 are currently in review. Please see our Publications page.
Impact story: Strengthening scientific capacity for African climate science through the LaunchPAD project 2-page summary.
You can read or download the full impact case study document below.
LaunchPAD: Climate model evaluation hub for Africa enters its first phase
New project set to fast-track development of climate models for Africa
Evaluating Climate Models with an African Lens
LaunchPAD 