World Meteorological Organization (WMO) is set to address issues pertaining to enhance capacity in weather and climate forecasting to Members globally, particularly in developing countries including Tanzania during the third meeting of the Standing Committee on Data Processing for Applied Earth System Modelling and Prediction (SC-ESMP), hosted by Tanzania Meteorological Authority (TMA) at Arusha International Conference Centre (AICC) from 20 to 24 March 2023.

Dr. David Richardson, Chair of the SC-ESMP said, this is the first in physical meeting to be conducted and the meeting is aiming at making sure forecast information is made available to all Members of WMO and therefore, they will be focused on how to support capacity building development and transmission of information to all users.

“Extra work can be done to make sure early warning information are available for all the increasing weather hazards around the world and moving away from just weather, to hydrology to support for water access, flooding, ocean, atmosphere composition and therefore support all component of the earth system around the world with the key aim of protecting lives and properties”. Said Richardson

Moreover, Dr. Anthony Rea, Director of Infrastructure Department in WMO, cemented that, the meeting being an important one since the Standing Committee plays a real important role as it is responsible for setting up global and regional processes for delivering data to NMHS and then to the citizen.

Speaking about initiatives made by WMO on enhancing the infrastructure, Dr. Rea said, “Under the umbrella of early warning system, we have couple of initiatives on System Observations Financing Facility (SOFF) which looks at the basics observational infrastructure which is relevant to the Standing Committee since, the data and observations are raw materials which fed the models and the deliver the data and products to the Members”.

On behalf of the TMA and the Vice Chair Dr. Hamza Kabelwa said that, Tanzania represent African tropical countries which exhibit high spatio-temporal weather and climate variability which contribute to the increase of occurrence of severe weather and climate extreme events like heavy rainfall, prolonged dry spells, flooding and intense weather hazards like tropical cyclone of which it is enforce urgent actions to enhance the capacity in forecasting system, giving an example of an historical TC Freddy lasted about a month with a zigzag movement and un common whereby on 21 February 2023 it made its first landfall over the coast of Madagascar and then reflected back to the Mozambique Channel and made a second landfall over the coast of Mozambique.

“Due to high spatial variability contributed by climate change, efforts to enhance capacity in forecasting systems should include enhancing availability of quality high resolution observational data, computational capacity, as well as exchanging the data to facilitate the work of designated Global Data Processing Forecasting System Centres to produce higher quality products”. Said Dr. Kabelwa.