Global Warming

Washington ― On the continent most vulnerable to climate change, officials from across Africa have committed to working with international partners to strengthen national weather and climate services that are critical to helping countries adapt to the changing conditions.
Climate change is already adding to Africa’s burdens of poverty, disease and conflict with impacts like desertification, deforestation, sea-level rise, reduced availability of fresh water, more intense cyclones, coastal erosion, the spread of malaria and food insecurity.
“Africa gives off less greenhouse gas than any other part of the world but it is the most threatened by climate change,” President Obama told the Ghanaian Parliament in Accra during a visit in 2009. “A warming planet will spread disease, shrink water resources and deplete crops, creating conditions that produce more famine and more conflict. All of us — particularly the developed world ― have a responsibility to slow these trends, through mitigation and by changing the way that we use energy.”
To tackle these and other issues, more than 400 participants, including many experts from the United States, attended the first Conference of Ministers Responsible for Meteorology in Africa, held April 12–16 in Nairobi, Kenya. The conference was organized by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the African Union.
Weather and climate experts from Africa and around the world met for the first three days and African ministers met for the last two days to hear recommendations from the experts and adopt the Ministerial Declaration (PDF, 28KB) on Meteorology and Climate in Africa.
“One of the major positives of the meeting was the level of interest and enthusiasm. All the countries were represented, including Somalia,” Simon Mason, chief climate scientist at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI), told America.gov. “There was wide recognition within the continent that the whole question of weather and climate needs to be taken much more seriously.”
IRI’s main funding comes from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), whose National Weather Service has trained staff from nearly every African meteorological service, Renee Leduc Clarke, a policy adviser in the National Weather Service’s International Activities Office, told America.gov.
“What this conference brings to light is that there are people in Africa who recognize the global implications of the gaps in information that exist in Africa,” Leduc Clarke said. “In terms of putting together this global puzzle of climate, you need the information inside Africa, especially since it’s expected that all of Africa’s impacts are going to be even larger than in some other areas.