FASTA – Bringing near real-time storm information to Africa to save lives and protect livelihoods

Nowcasting is the future of weather prediction, especially in the tropics. The tropics have more and more unpredictability in the weather patterns, especially rainfall. The area is affected by many systems, that sometimes longer range forecasting does not give a satisfactory confidence level. In an area where more and more people are becoming aware of the effects of climate change in their weather patterns, traditional short, medium or long range forecasts are increasingly becoming unreliable. Nowcasting can be used, not as a replacement of these traditional methods but as a complementary method to enrich the predictability of weather in the next one to six hours.
Nowcasting is a game-changer and should be integrated into the way we forecast the weather. It is useful for disaster management and the community in general.