Here, we aim to improve west african climate information services by CO-developing a 21ST century agro-pastoral water deficit prediction system (21CAWDPS), with servir s west africa hub agriculture…

This federal contract award, valued at $703,395.08, was made by NASA to the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) to improve West African climate information services. The goal is to co-develop a 21st Century Agro-Pastoral Water Deficit Prediction System with SERVIR's West Africa Hub, AGRHYMET, and the African Centre of Meteorological Application for Development. This will involve modernizing the existing agro-pastoral water deficit monitoring system using NASA satellite data and integrating it with sub-seasonal climate forecasts. The resulting climate information and expected impacts will be communicated through bulletins and forecast data platforms. This work directly supports NASA's strategic goals of reducing climate uncertainty and informing societal response. UCSB, as a public research university, is leveraging its expertise in climate research and partnerships with African institutions to deliver this project. The contract does not have a set-aside designation, indicating it was competed on a full and open basis.

Here, we aim to improve west african climate information services by CO-developing a 21ST century agro-pastoral water deficit prediction system (21CAWDPS), with servir s west africa hub agriculture hydrology and meteorology (agrhymet) and the african centre of meteorological application for development (acmad). Specifically, the proposed work seeks to improve: 1. Agricultural and rangeland productivity, 2. Agro-pastoral water usage, 3. Transhumant movement management in west africa. This goal will be achieved by modernizing the existing agro-pastoral WD monitoring system using state-of-the-art, publicly available NASA satellite observations, and then integrating them with sub-seasonal climate forecasts from NASA s geos model and other north american multimodel ensemble (nmme) subx models. The climate update and expected impacts on agriculture and rangeland, and agro-pastoral water will be communicated through BI-weekly bulletins in french and english, and forecast data will be provided through servir's cloud based platforms. In so doing this work directly address the primary 'weather and climate' thematic area need, to link in sub-seasonal to seasonal forecasts for improved water and agricultural productivity. The proposed work will build upon past NASA and servir supported projects and will empower climate services by agrhymet, acmad and their partners. Specific decisions that the proposed effort targets are related to type and timing of crop planting, food storage and trade, food insecurity relief efforts, farmers and pasture livelihood, and pastoralists and heard movements. Climate-informed and seamless and regular availability of the forecasts of agriculture, rangeland, and water productivity will help the decision makers (e.g. regional and international agencies, and national governments) plan to mitigate adverse impacts of climate variability and change in planning for the aforementioned decisions. In the long-term, the integration of sub-seasonal climate forecasts with those decisions will improve west africa s resilience and will better equip IT for climate adaptation. The proposed work is highly relevant to the goals of NASA s strategic plan, NASA earth science s goals, and servir s overarching goal. The primary goal of this proposed work is to improve agricultural and rangeland productivity, and agro-pastoral water and transhuman movement management in west africa by facilitating the integration of sub-seasonal scale climate forecasts in the decision-making process. In doing so, the proposed work addresses one of the primary objectives of the NASA decadal survey (2017), which is reducing climate uncertainty and informing societal response. This proposal also directly addresses one of the science goals of the NASA earth system science to further the use of earth system science research to inform decisions and provide benefits to society. The proposal team is comprised of early to mid-career researchers with extensive experience in supporting applied decision making in africa (and in CONUS) by integrating satellite and forecast information. The team has ability to leverage ongoing support from USAID and the USGS to provide committed staff hosted at agrhymet (DR. Alkhalil adoum) and extensive science computing facilities provided by the climate hazards center. The team overall also has intermediate-high french language fluency. A GSR (blakely) and CO-PI (DR. Grace) are fluent in french, two PIS proficient in french (DR. Funk and shukla) and collaborator DR. Adoum is a native french speaker.