ENACTS Ethiopia: Partnerships for Improving Climate Data Availability, Accessibility, and Utility

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1 ENACTS Ethiopia: s for Improving Climate Data Availability, Accessibility, and Utility Tufa Dinku, Jessica Sharoff Ethiopia National Meteorological Agency, International Research Institute for Climate and Society, University of Reading Africa l Health / Water / Agriculture / Information Products Introduction The Ethiopia National Meteorological Agency (NMA), the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI), and the University of Reading (UoR) have partnered on a three-track approach to simultaneously improve data availability, access, and use in Ethiopia. The project, Enhancing National (ENACTS), aims to support decision-makers in climate-sensitive sectors by filling spatial and temporal gaps in existing climate observations and providing an array of derived products (e.g., sector-specific map rooms) available to users through the Internet. The project, which mainly supports the agriculture, water, and public health sectors, was funded by Google. org from January 2008 to December 2011 and had three major components: Improving data availability by creating an enhanced national climate time series, which integrates quality-controlled station data from the national observation network with locally calibrated satellite products. Improving data accessibility via an online facility installed at NMA that provides user-friendly tools for visualizing, querying, and accessing information products. The NMA web page 1 itself has been redesigned to better present existing products and services and to deliver products derived from new data. Improving the utility of climate data by strengthening the capacity of users to understand and use climate information and services. In December 2011 the project culminated with the launch of the online service, which incorporates both existing NMA products and new products developed throughout the evolution of ENACTS. However, the work in Ethiopia isn t finished users will need further support and training to understand the new and existing climate information products, and the products themselves need to be customized. ENACTS is unique in that no other metrological service in Africa provides such services. Though the ENACTS data and its associated products can be applied to a number of sectors, health was the first focus of the project, which addressed the needs identified by the public health sector in Ethiopia. It provides a coherent suite of open-access climate products and tools that can be used effectively by public health stakeholders in managing current risks and adapting to climate change. Socioeconomic Background Climate variability and change are serious challenges to sustainable development in Africa. The recent famine in Horn of Africa is yet another reminder of how fluctuations in the climate can destroy lives and livelihoods. Ethiopia, one of the countries impacted by the current drought, has been suffering from climate fluctuations for decades; climate variability has thus been a major hindrance to development. In this context, the use of climate information can serve to increase the nation s resilience in the face of climate variability and thereby promote food security, economic prosperity, and public health (Dinku, et al. 2011). The drought in , for example, decreased Ethiopia s agricultural productions by 21 percent and GDP by 9.7 percent (World Bank, 2006). The effect of climate variability is felt even more by poor households (Stern, 2007). Meanwhile, the drought cost each household over northeastern parts of the country more than 75 percent of its average annual income in crop and livestock losses (Carter et al., 2004). Given that roughly 98% of all farmland in Ethiopia is solely reliant on rainfall, variability in precipitation has an enormous impact on both agricultural GDP and household food security. That is, climate variability plays a critical role in the economic development of Ethiopia and the wellbeing of its people. Climate variability also has a significant influence on the spatial distribution and transmission of many diseases, including malaria. The variability in rainfall quantity and timing, which in turn impacts the occurrence of disease, has cost Ethiopia many lives and has been a major challenge to its economic and social development. Establishing resilience against the negative impacts of climate and maximizing the benefits from favorable conditions requires the design and implementation of effective climate risk management strategies. This cannot be accomplished without the availability of decision-relevant climate information. Credible information about the past climate, recent trends, likely future trajectories, and associated impacts is therefore essential for climate risk management (Dinku et al. 2011)

2 Target Audience This project aims to develop Ethiopia s capacity to generate and use climate information products that serve decision makers in climatesensitive sectors, particularly agriculture, water, and public health. In its initial phases, the project has primarily focused on working with the public health sector, building off strong existing partnerships. The specific target audiences are decision makers, experts in the Ethiopian meteorological agency and climate-sensitive sectors (e.g. agriculture, water, health), extension agents, researchers, educators, and students. The benefits are expected to trickle down to everyone in the country through these main actors. Climate and Contextual information The climate data used in the ENACTS project comes in two main forms. The first is station data (rainfall and temperature) from the national network managed by NMA. The second kind of data is satellite rainfall and temperature estimates from European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT) and the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The satellite products are used to fill spatial and temporal gaps in the Ethiopian national observations. The Ethiopian NMA contributed quality-controlled ground-based station data from more than 600 rain gauge stations and over 300 temperature stations. Although the NMA does not usually make this information available to other organizations, they were willing to facilitate access and use of the data because they were actively engaged in the development and implementation of the ENACTS project. The project also involved collaboration with the Tropical Application of Meteorology using the Satellite (TAMSAT) group at the University of Reading, United Kingdom. TAMSAT obtained and processed raw Meteosat satellite data going back 30 years. The satellite data were then calibrated over Ethiopia using station data to generate the best possible satellite rainfall estimates. Although the work was done for Ethiopia, the satellite dataset covers the whole of Africa. This effort required many resources and was a time-consuming undertaking. However, it was a one-time necessary investment in infrastructure and the information can now also be used if the project scales to other regions in Africa. Project partners collaborated with NMA to clean the national climate observations and combine them with satellite proxies to create a 30- year time series of rainfall and temperature data at a 10-day timescale for every 10-kilometer grid over the country. The combined rainfall dataset (Figure 1) draws both station data and satellite-derived rainfall estimates from the Meteosat satellite. Figure 1: Rainfall products for the second 10-day period in April The top-left panel is the rain gauge data for that 10-day period, while the top-right panel shows satellite estimate. The lower-left panel is interpolated rain gauge, and the lower-right panel is combined rain gauge and satellite data. The interpolated gauge follows the overall spatial structure of rainfall as depicted by gauge data, but with significant smoothing. The main problem with the gridded data is that values over the northeastern and northwestern lowlands, where there are few or no gauges, are significantly overestimated or underestimated. The satellite estimate depicts the spatial structure of the rainfall very well, but significantly underestimates high rainfall values. The combined product overcomes, to a degree, the shortcomings of both the interpolated gauge and satellite estimates (Dinku el al. 2011). For temperature, station data was combined with NASA s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite Land Surface Temperature (LST) estimate data and digital elevation model (Figure 2). The resulting products the enhanced national climate time series leverage critical 21st-century technology in a region that is traditionally assumed to be data poor. 2

3 Users of the ENACTS datasets and derived products can easily combine this information with the socioeconomic information of their interest. One of the advantages of the new dataset is that it is in gridded format, which makes it easy to extract for any administrative boundary or combine with any other georeferenced data. For instance, health experts have been using this dataset with malaria data to explore the impact of climate variability on malaria in Ethiopia and evaluate the public health interventions made to reduce the occurrences of the disease. There are plans to improve the system further; these improvements would include direct input and analysis of sector-specific data. If such climate information is made available to the user community at different levels (practitioners, researchers, planners, policy maker, etc.), it could be used in many ways such as planning watershed development, informing plant breeding programs, improving the timing of public health interventions, and making infrastructure and communities less vulnerable to extreme events. NMA staff members who had been trained on data quality control, satellite rainfall and temperature retrievals, as well as combining station and satellite data did most of the work at NMA. This ensures the continuity of the project (Dinku et al. 2011). Figure 2: Maximum temperature for the second 10-day period in April The top-left panel is station data, while the top-right panel is interpolated station data. The bottom-left panel is station data combined with 10-day period averages of MODIS LST and elevation. The bottom- right panel has included topography for reference. The station-only product significantly underestimates temperature over the data-sparse lowlands because of the influence of data from the neighboring highland areas, while the combined product does not have this problem (Dinku et al. 2011) Five map rooms are aimed at providing information to users. These map rooms are being created by IRI using IRI Data Library (DL) tools and then transferred to NMA. The first two of these, Climate Analysis and Climate Monitoring have been completed. The Climate and Health map room is not complete but already includes some useful products. The Agriculture and Water map rooms are still underway and will be completed in consultation with the user community in each sector. The Climate Analysis Map Room provides information on the mean climate (in terms of rainfall and temperature) at any point or for any administrative boundary. It also shows both rainfall and temperature seasons over the years as compared to the mean. Meanwhile, the Climate Monitoring Map Room is based on decadal rainfall data and provides a contextual perspective of recent precipitation by comparing it to previous seasons and long-term averages. Data is updated every 10 days, thus enabling close monitoring of the season. Finally, in the Health Map Room, precipitation, temperature and relative humidity data are used to describe climatic conditions and assess their suitability for malaria transmission. The map displays the number of months during the year when climatological averages meet these requirements. Users may gain insight into how often these conditions have actually occurred during any particular month by clicking on the map at the location of interest. Implementation Processes and mechanisms IRI is a World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Early Warning Systems for Malaria and Climate-Sensitive Diseases, and has a long-standing relationship with the WHO regional office in Africa and the National Ministry of Health in Ethiopia. Through ongoing climate and health meetings/discussions in East Africa, this community highlighted its desire for the health sector to more readily use climate information products that could inform its own planning and resource allocation processes. Based on years of experience working with the NMA and climate-sensitive sectors in Ethiopia, IRI developed an initial concept note to address the challenges and opportunities identified by these communities and years of ongoing collaboration. This concept note was then shared with the NMA and the UoR. During this time IRI staff also visited Ethiopia to hold a number of potential partner discussions, particularly aimed at liaising between the health and climate communities and further developing relationships between the two. During this visit a multi-agency Climate and Health Working Group (CHWG) was established, with a community-based non-governmental organization, the Anti-Malaria Association (AMA), chosen to act as the secretariat of the group. The Ethiopian Ministry of Health (MoH) was selected as acting chair and the NMA as co-chair. Nine agencies in all were included as initial members. A full proposal was then developed incorporating input from the other partners. The first step of the implementation phase was transferring the skills and tools to NMA. This was done through a series of training workshops conducted by IRI and the UoR in Ethiopia. In the next steps of the project, IRI and UoR provided technical support while the NMA implemented the different phases of the project. The MoH identified priority climate-sensitive diseases, such as malaria (a wet condition disease), and meningitis (a dry condition disease), which further specified the project s focus. Trainings were also provided for health professionals (mainly epidemiologists from regional offices and ministry) in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and the Anti- 3

4 Malaria Association. The ENACTS products were officially launched in Ethiopia in December of 2011 during a conference at the NMA, and the tools became accessible to the public online at the NMAs website. Even though health was the main focus of the project, the generated data sets and products could be used by or tailored for users from other sectors (which is why agriculture and water map rooms are being developed in addition to the Health map rooms). The data sets and the IRI Data Library Tools installed at NMA could also be used to create other user-specific map rooms such as decision support system for disaster early warning. Stakeholder involvement Climate information is mainly disseminated through the NMA s improved webpage and map rooms, which help to translate the ENACTS products to be more visually accessible and user-friendly. These products and tools were launched in December 2011 and are freely available to the public. Additional funds are needed to engage specific user communities and develop the three upcoming map rooms according to user requirements. funding mechanisms This project received joint funding from the private and government sector. Google.org funded the project, Building Capacity to Produce and Use Climate and Environmental Information for Improving Health in East Africa, contributing a total of US$900,000 through a onetime grant spanning 40 months from 2008 to This grant was supplemented by a grant/cooperative agreement from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) with leveraged project funds and IRI staff time. A primary focus of the project was to provide training to and build infrastructure within the NMA so that local staff could continue to generate, update, and maintain the products and services produced by the ENACTS project. The NMA will use its own resources in sustaining the data, products, and online services, and will be able to maintain the project in its current form. However, additional funding will be required to improve the service and continue to engage with users. These are critical aspects of the project, as interacting with user communities will help increase the understanding and application of the tools. Communication with users also provides the producing institutions with valuable feedback. Management and decision making This project was led by three principal investigators (PIs) from IRI, though different project activities were discussed and agreed upon by participating institutions. Implementation plans were laid out and Memorandums of Understanding were signed to facilitate the smooth implementation of the project. Required changes were made in consultation with the relevant parties. 1 Columbia University, International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI) 1 IRI was founded on the belief that new knowledge in climate science could be translated for the benefit of societies, particularly to disadvantaged communities in developing countries. In collaboration with regional partners, the IRI develops tools for generating climate information products that are tailored to meet the needs of local decision makers.. IRI initially proposed the project, obtained the funding, and coordinated the project s actualization. It developed and implemented standards for station-data quality control and methodologies for merging station data with satellite proxies. IRI trained NMA staff members on the different skills needed to implement the project at NMA. The IRI also provided technical support to NMA and other partners in Ethiopia. 2 Ethiopian National Meteorological Agency (NMA) Since its inception over 30 years ago, the Ethiopian National Meteorological Agency (NMA) has served both the government and civil societies in Ethiopia with the objective of providing weather and climate monitoring and prediction products to stakeholder communities and thereby reduce the effects of climate-related catastrophes. The NMA has a large data archive and record of observations. NMA is the main partner and implementer of the project and was involved in the initiative from its inception. Most project implementation activities took place at NMA with its full participation and leadership. 3 Anti-Malaria Association (AMA) AMA is a non-partisan, non-religious, indigenous NGO committed to empowering communities to improve public health, particularly among the very poor. It works primarily to mitigate the impacts and prevent the spread of malaria, HIV/AIDS, and other major infectious diseases. AMA also provides reproductive health services. In this project, AMA was instrumental in bringing the climate and healthy community together through the formation of the Climate and Health Working Group. AMA was also essential in organizing training workshops and conferences. Ministry of Health Ethiopia 4 The Ministry of Health in Ethiopia co-chairs the Climate and Health Working Group with NMA and provides inputs to the training courses by selecting appropriate trainees, and conducting trainings. University of Reading, Tropical Applications of Meteorology Using Satellite Data (TAMSAT) 5 The TAMSAT Research Group at the University of Reading in the UK, investigates the use of satellite imagery for estimating rainfall and other surface water components in Africa. They have a long history of working with African meteorological services, including the NMA, as well as with IRI. In this project TAMSAT played an important role in building capacity to generate quality rainfall products for both real-time and historical data use in Ethiopia. TAMSAT was involved with the project from its inception and was the lead in developing satellite rainfall products and training NMA staff members

5 Evaluation Two baseline surveys were conducted at the start of the project. The first survey was aimed at understanding the potential impact of the project in terms of the climate information provided by NMA to its users. This survey therefore targeted NMA s capacity and services. The second survey was targeted at health professionals at different levels across the country. Elaborate questionnaires were prepared and distributed throughout Ethiopia, and results were analyzed by IRI experts. In this case, surveys were meant to provide insight as to the existing the awareness and use of climate information throughout the health community. A follow-up survey will enable us to understand the impact of the project both on the provision of climate information and its use. In the meanwhile, the NMA web page is able to monitor the change in the number and type of users. Since the ENACTS products were released just six months ago, it is too soon to document how they have been used in any specific sector. In fact, project partners are still in the process of training end-users on how to better understand and apply the provided climate information. This project has, however, taken revolutionary steps in sharing climate data and making it freely accessible to a wide range of audiences. This was previously not possible and is expected to play a role in facilitating adaptation to climate change in the future. Capacities Existing Capacities The technical support and climate expertise provided by IRI and UoR have been critical throughout the development of this project, and small groups of staff were needed to travel to Ethiopia and spend a significant amount of time working in the region. Furthermore, ENACTS relies heavily on the IRI Data Library, a free, powerful, and web-accessible tool that allows users to manipulate, view, and download any number of earth science and other data sets through a standard web browser. The technology behind the Data Library was transferred to the NMA in order to support the sharing of climate information and the development of dynamic mapping products and tools, including sector specific map rooms. The Data Library was also an essential tool in training public health professionals in the integration of climate information into decision making. Thanks to the workshops and training courses offered by this project, and the work of the knowledgeable local NMA climate scientists and staff who were able to conduct the trainings and implement the project throughout the region, the public health community now has a better understanding of the value and potential uses of climate information. However, this community will still need more support. Similar support will also be critical in the agriculture, disaster risk management, and water communities. Capacity gaps The ENACTS project was set to address three main challenges to the use climate information: availability, access, and use. Despite the willingness among all partners for dialogue, however, major challenges remained before the health community could receive relevant data and timely products that could be integrated routinely into health information, surveillance, and epidemic early warning systems. The available weather stations throughout Ethiopia are unevenly distributed and the majority of stations are located along the main roads. This imposes severe limitations on the availability of climate information in rural communities where these services are needed most. Where observations are taken, they are often low quality and unavailable beyond the respective national meteorological services. Lack of climate information has also been one of the major constraints for integrating climate into development planning and practice in Africa. Furthermore, the Ethiopian NMA is usually very protective of its databases and maintains restrictive data dissemination policies, which limits the distribution of climate information within Ethiopia. The project partners overcame these challenges by combining local observations with global products and by making data available through the Internet for user needs while still allowing the NMA to maintain control of national observations. Although these techniques are not new in and of themselves, it is the first time that they have been used to solve the specific problem of data availability in Africa. Similarly, ENACTS is also the first instance in which the IRI Data Library has been transferred to a national meteorological service in Africa. Cultivating a relationship with the NMA and building trust between stakeholders also helped to facilitate this process. Finally, training the health community to understand and use climate information has been critical it ensuring its implementation. Looking toward the future Goals Goals. As described earlier, at this stage the project offers climate information products that are generally applicable rather than userspecific. The next step will be engagement with specific user groups. However, the project in Ethiopia is currently not receiving any new funding. Depending on availability of funds, future work could include: Continued engagement with and training of users; Completion of the health, agriculture, and water map rooms in consultation with users; Development of decision support tools particularly for disaster early warning Project partners also aim to expand the geographic scope of the project. A similar project has just been completed in Tanzania and another is being implemented at regional level in collaboration with the AGRHYMET center in West Africa. There are also plans to implement the project in Madagascar, Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso. The ultimate goal is to reach as many countries as possible. Project expansion The Ethiopian experience can serve as a template for improving climate services across Africa and work completed for this process can be leveraged for upscaling to additional countries. The vast majority of the technical effort was completed for the Ethiopia project and carrying out similar projects in other African countries will now be faster and less expensive. Obtaining and processing raw satellite data going back 30-years was a tremendous task and took over a year to complete. Now that this process has been completed for the entire continent, it does not need to be repeated. Furthermore, the methodologies and computer codes developed for generating the climate time series can easily be adopted for any other country. Finally, this was the first time that the IRI Data Library was installed and used outside of IRI. Although there were some initial technical challenges, these have been overcome and it will be easier to customize these tools for other countries in the future. 5

6 It would be possible to expand outside of Africa, but such expansion would not leverage the raw satellite data already obtained and processed. Additional resource investments would therefore be necessary to do so. Lastly, to expand the geographic scope of this project, it would be necessary to develop a close partnership with the country s national meteorological agency and user communities. It is also necessary to collect as much station data as possible from the region of interest. It may take time and resources to organize and provide quality control for the data, though this varies from country to country depending on existing levels of data organization. It should be noted that some countries might need to digitize their data. Lessons Learned A number of lessons were learned over the course of this 40-month project. These are articulated below: All the training courses were conducted at NMA, which enabled many people to participate who might not have otherwise. Furthermore, the training was targeted at specific tasks, which also encouraged participation. Obtaining and processing 30 years of raw satellite data, which covers the whole of Africa, was a time-consuming but very important task. Investing in infrastructure is valuable and worth the time in the scheme of future activity and project expansion. Calibration of the satellite rainfall retrieval algorithm using all locally available rain gauge data significantly improved the quality of the estimates. The algorithm used in this project was a very simple one and it only used thermal infrared data, yet it outperformed more sophisticated algorithms that incorporate passive microwave data. Combining station observations with global products such as satellite proxies can significantly alleviate the challenge of spatial and temporal gaps in station observations. Improving data availability alone will not guarantee the use of climate information in development practices. Rather, extra efforts (e.g. training sessions) are needed to ensure that the information is both accessible and useful. The map rooms were built using IRI Data Library tools, which were then transferred to NMA. The DL enables users to access and analyze hundreds of data sets and download results in different formats. The main accomplishment was the transfer of an empty DL structure to NMA without the data so that it could be filled with NMA s own data. This will now enable NMA to create more products from its own and other data sets. Creating in-region capacity to generate information products that serve decision needs is vital to the continuation of this effort and other like it. Capacity will also be built in the health community to understand and use the data provided and, where necessary, demand new products and services (based on knowledge of what is likely to be most useful and what is realistically achievable). The way forward While the project team is enthusiastic about moving this effort forward, a few challenges remain. These include: Funding is needed to expand ENACTS into other regions and to host sectoral-based capacity building workshops within Ethiopia that would spread the use of the climate information s must be built with other meteorological agencies and sectors necessary to start projects in other countries Climate information must be available in new project countries 6

7 Principles of the GFCS This project addresses Principles 1, 4, 2, 7, and 8 of the GFCS. Principle 1: Principle 2: All countries will benefit, but priority shall go to building the capacity of climate-vulnerable developing countries. The primary goal of the Framework will be to ensure greater availability of, access to, and use of climate services for all countries. Principle 3: Framework activities will address three geographic domains; global, regional and national Principle 4: Operational climate services will be the core element of the Framework. Principle 5: Climate information is primarily an international public good provided by governments, which will have a central role in its management through the Framework. Principle 6: The Framework will promote the free and open exchange of climate-relevant observational data while respecting national and international data policies. Principle 7: The role of the Framework will be to facilitate and strengthen, not to duplicate. Principle 8: The Framework will be built through user provider partnerships that include all stakeholders. References Carter, M.R. et al., 2004: Shocks, Sensitivity and Resilience: Tracking the economic impacts of environ- mental disasters on assets in Ethiopia and Honduras. BASICS Collaborative Research Support Program, University of Wisconsin, 38 pp. Dinku, T. et al., 2011: Improving availability, access and use of climate information. WMO Bulletin. 60(2): 1-7. Stern, N., 2007: The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. World Bank, 2006: Ethiopia: Managing Water Resources to Maximize Sustainable Growth. (Report No ET). The World Bank, Washington, DC. 7