Are Kenya Meteorological Department heavy rainfall advisories useful for forecast-based early action and early preparedness?

Abstract

<jats:p>Abstract. Preparedness saves lives. Forecasts can help improve preparedness by triggering early actions as part of a pre-defined protocols under the Forecast-based Action/Finance (FbA) approach, however it is essential to understand the skill of a forecast before using it as a trigger. In order to support the development of early action protocols over Kenya we evaluate the 33 heavy rainfall advisories (HRA) issued by the Kenya Meteorological Department (KMD) during 2015–2019. The majority of HRA warn counties which go on to receive heavy rainfall. However in general the total area warned is much larger than the extent of significant rainfall. The three periods of flood impacts during 2018 and 2019 were all preceded by HRA, which warned the counties with recorded losses. By contrast, none of the four flooding periods in 2015–2017 were preceded by HRA. We suggest that access to the UK Met Office Global Hazard Map (GHM) at KMD at the end of 2017 was a key factor in this step-change in skill. Overall we find that KMD HRA effectivly warn of heavy rainfall and flooding and can be a vital source of information for early preparedness. However a lack of spatial detail on flood impacts limits their utility for systematic FbA approaches. We conclude with suggestions for making the HRA more useful for FbA, and outline the developing approach to flood forecasting in Kenya. </jats:p>

The use of Twitter and Facebook Social Media in Communicating & Disseminating Weather and Climate Information by Kenya Meteorological Department

“…People are unlikely to engage in the actions necessary to protect themselves from heavy rains if they do not receive, attend to, or understand information provided by KMD. Up-to-date, researchers who are interested in public responses to weather and climate information have D focused most of their efforts on the factors that influence communication reception and understanding (Macleod et al 2020).…”

Impact-Based Flood Early Warning for Rural Livelihoods in Uganda

“…Trigger thresholds can be determined using several methods, as noted in the scholarly literature (Coughlan de Lopez et al 2020). This study has shown that these thresholds can be further varied based on context-specific information such as crop calendars and livestock sale schedules to improve the targeting of anticipatory actions, for example, by adjusting the threshold so alerts for low-magnitude floods are triggered only during critical times of the years when lowcost interventions can be initiated through existing disaster management structures (MacLeod et al 2021).…”