This archive report was first published on 25 November 2019.
Kenya is facing increasing levels of hunger and erratic weather patterns, with floods and droughts affecting farmland and infrastructure.
However, the country is taking steps to mitigate the impact of climate change on food security with the development of its first localised weather modelling system, the Climate Atlas.
Developed by researchers at Kenya's Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology, the Climate Atlas will provide projections on rainfall and temperature patterns across Kenya's 47 counties from 2050 to 2100.
"The Climate Atlas will provide us with future scenarios of what the weather patterns will be like at a county-level in Kenya," said John Wesonga, lead developer of the web-based Climate Atlas platform.
"We are looking for data such as in which locations will we see the highest and lowest temperatures and rainfall, how high and low will the temperatures and rainfall likely to be, what time of year they will happen, and how long they will last," Wesonga added.
The Climate Atlas is expected to be launched in Kenya in March next year, providing policymakers, researchers, businesses, and farmers with the data needed to make informed decisions about investments in agriculture production.
"Investing in irrigation is useful if more droughts are predicted, but if the long-term prediction is that rainfall will increase, a different investment - such as greenhouses for tomato production - might be more sensible," said Irene Koomen from the Netherlands-based Wageningen University and Research, which is supporting the Climate Atlas project.
Published on November 25, 2019, by Thomson Reuters Foundation.
