The vulnerability of social-ecological systems in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) to climate variability and change means that there is an urgent need to better integrate weather and climate information into societal decision-making processes. Long-term climate adaptation in these regions has received increasing attention, with recent initiatives aiming to increase resilience to climate change at timescales of years to decades. Less focus has been given to weather and short-term climate information. However, users are principally interested in shorter timescales (hours to seasons) where actions can immediately reduce the impacts of severe weather events. Focusing on the priority sectors of agriculture and food security, water and disaster management, this paper uses a systematic literature review approach to analyse 61 empirical case studies drawn from academic literature and projects across SSA. We identify the main users of climate services and outline current practices and reported benefits. Barriers that impede the delivery and uptake of climate services are identified and potential strategies for overcoming them outlined based on the reporting of successful practices. Our findings show that greater capacity building of personnel working for National Meteorological and Hydrological Services and Agricultural Extension staff and reinforcing and sustaining collaboration between different stakeholders (climate scientists, hydrologists, extension workers, farmers and other user groups), are essential factors for improving the uptake and utility of weather and climate services to enhance resilience to climate shocks in SSA.

The socio-economic consequences posed by climate change in Africa are giving increasing emphasis to the need for trend analysis and detection of changes in hydro-climatic variables in data deficient areas. This study analyzes rainfall data from seventeen rain gauges unevenly distributed across the Logone catchment in the Lake Chad basin (LCB) over a fifty-year period . After quality control of the rainfall data using homogeneity tests, non-parametric MannKendall (MK) and Spearman rho tests were applied to detect the presence of trends. Trend magnitude was calculated using Sen's Slope Estimator. Results of the homogeneity test showed that rainfall was homogeneous across the catchment. Trend analysis revealed the presence of negative trends for annual rainfall at all the stations. Results of long term trend analysis at a monthly time scale revealed the presence of statistically insignificant positive trends at 32% of the stations. Spatially, the analysis showed a clear distinction in rainfall magnitude between the semi-arid and Sudano zones. The slope of the trend lines for annual rainfall averaged over the respective zones was higher in the semi-arid zone (-4.37) compared to the Sudano zone (-4.02). However, the station with the greatest reduction in annual rainfall (-8.06 mm) was located in the Sudano zone.Keywords: Rainfall analysis, Mann-Kendall, Sudano-Sahel, Logone catchment, Lake Chad basin. 1) IntroductionPrecipitation in the African Sudano-Sahel is highly variable both spatially and temporally, and experiences periods of prolonged drought such as that which affected the region in the 70s and 80s (Boyd et al., 2013;Nicholson, 2013). According to Nicholson (2013), rainfall in the Sudano-Sahel region is controlled by mesoscale convective systems (MCS). Its variability can be attributed to several factors. Firstly, as over the rest of Africa, annual rainfall variability can be attributed to global sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies (Giannini et al., 2008). Secondly, for the Sudano-Sahel, fluctuations in high altitude jet stream circulation is responsible for the spatiotemporal variability of rainfall in the region. This includes the African Easterly Jet (AEJ), the Tropical Easterly Jet (TEJ), the African Westerly Jet (AWJ), Low Level Jets, the West African Westerly Jet (WAWJ), the Nocturnal Low Level Jets (NLLJ), the Saharan Heat Low (SHL), and the Saharan Air Layer (SAL) (Nicholson, 2013).Rainfall variability in the region is also strongly influenced by seasonal regime changes. The oceanic regime (monsoon), characterized by the progressive increase of moist air flow from the Atlantic Ocean into the continent up to about 11°N in May, is associated with seasonal migration of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) from its southern position in the boreal winter to its northern position in the boreal summer (Lebel et al., 2003). The continental regime (harmattan) is characterized by large convective systems during July to September embedded in the easterly circulation (Lebel et al., 2003), an...

Africa has a paucity of long term reliable meteorological ground station data and reanalysis products are used to provide the climate estimations that are important for climate change projections. In this paper monthly observed precipitation records in the Logone catchment of the Lake Chad Basin are used to evaluate the performance of two global reanalysis products: the Climate Forecasting System Reanalysis (CFSR) and ERA Interim datasets. The two reanalysis products reproduced the monthly, annual and decadal cycle of precipitation and variability relatively accurately albeit with some discrepancies. The catchment rainfall gradient was also well captured by the two products. There are good correlations between the reanalysis and rain gauge datasets although significant deviations exist, especially for CFSR. Both reanalysis products overestimated rainfall in 68% of the rain gauge stations. ERA Interim produced the lowest bias and mean absolute error with average values of 2% and 6.5 mm month −1 respectively compared to 15% and 34 mm month −1 for the CFSR. However, both reanalysis products systematically underestimated annual rainfall in the catchment during the period 1997-2002 for ERA Interim and 1998-2000 for CFSR. This research demonstrates that evaluating reanalysis products in remote areas like the Logone catchment enables users to identify artefacts inherent in reanalysis datasets. This will facilitate improvements in certain aspects of the reanalysis forecast model physics and parameterization to improve reanalysis dataset quality. This study concludes that the application of each reanalysis product in the catchment will depend on the purpose for which it is to be used and the spatial scale required.

This paper investigates the potential of using global reanalysis datasets as input for hydrological modelling in the data-scarce Sudano-Sahel region. To achieve this, we used two global atmospheric reanalyses (Climate Forecasting System Reanalysis and European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) ERA-Interim) datasets and one global meteorological forcing dataset WATCH Forcing Data methodology applied to ERA-Interim (WFDEI). These datasets were used to drive the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) in the Logone catchment in the Lake Chad basin. Model performance indicators after calibration showed that, at daily and monthly time steps, only WFDEI produced Nash Sutcliff Efficiency (NSE) and Coefficient of Determination (R 2 ) values above 0.50. Despite a general underperformance compared to WFDEI, CFSR performed better than the ERA-Interim. Model uncertainty analysis after calibration showed that more than 60% of all daily and monthly observed streamflow values at all hydrometric stations were bracketed within the 95 percent prediction uncertainty (95PPU) range for all datasets. Results from this study also show significant differences in simulated actual evapotranspiration estimates from the datasets. Overall results showed that biased corrected WFDEI outperformed the two reanalysis datasets; meanwhile CFSR performed better than the ERA-Interim. We conclude that, in the absence of gauged hydro-meteorological data, WFDEI and CFSR could be used for hydrological modelling in data-scarce areas such as the Sudano-Sahel region.

Recent environmental policies introduced to safeguard the quality of water resources have focussed on encouraging pro-environmental behaviours (PEB). This has resulted in a considerable volume of research output that seeks to investigate the determinants of PEB in the context of water resources management. However, there is a paucity of literature exploring the topic within the developing country context, though evidence suggests that these regions record the highest rates of water resource pollution. This limits our understanding of the determinants of PEB and thus constrains our ability to develop and implement effective policies to encourage uptake of PEB. Following this, we apply the Theory of Planned Behaviour to explore the determinants of PEB, using structural equation modelling to analyse survey data from rural Ghana. The evidence supports the hypothesis that attitudes and perceived behavioural control affects intentions, and this translates into pro-environmental behaviour. Results further indicate that attitude and perceived behavioural control have a strong explanatory power in people’s intentions, and intentions are influential drivers of pro-environmental behaviour. An explicit recognition of the role of situational factors could offer a profound understanding of the determinants of behaviours that promote water resources management and support the development and implementation of policies aimed at safeguarding the quality of water resources.