An Early Warning System for Storms: Using AI to Power ‘Nowcasting’ Across Africa
Across the UK, networks of land-based weather stations, radars and satellites make up Britain’s vast infrastructure for weather monitoring. These feed live data into Met Office models to deliver precise hour-by-hour weather forecasts several days in advance, helping people make day-to-day decisions and bringing benefits across a range of sectors. Yet, in parts of the developing world, like Africa, patchy radar networks paint a starkly different picture for weather forecasting.
Africa is a continent of big extremes in weather, with storms that can pose a severe threat-to-life to communities and significantly drain local economies. Data from satellites and the continent’s small number of radar stations can help to predict overall weather patterns a few days in advance, but they fall short of forecasting the types of storms that develop rapidly over just a few hours or minutes. With infrastructure that is more vulnerable to extreme weather, there is a pressing need for national weather agencies to provide accurate, up-to-date storm warnings to help safeguard their communities.