Climate Change and Impact on Water Availability in Africa: Projections and Adaptation

This project has two components:

  • Field-Scale Water Management in Adaptation to Climate Change in Morocco

  • Projecting Impacts of Climate Change on Water Availability in West Africa

The first component builds directly on the results of our first UMRP project (2017-2022), which included projections of drier future conditions in Morocco. Our focus on Northwest Africa was part of a longer-term effort to better understand how climate change may impact water availability in the African continent. This first component has the objective of achieving efficient water management at the field scale to complement existing systems for water management at the basin-scale and the Morocco’s recently launched 2020--2050 National Water Plan. This includes the installation, functional testing and economic optimization of an underground storm water capture and storage facility adjacent to the UM6P Experimental Farm in Ben Guerir, which is intended to serve as a model for similar installations across Morocco.

The second component of the project expands our focus to the variability of climate change impacts across all of West Africa. We will investigate the risk to water availability and rainfed agriculture in the southern fringes of the Sahara Desert from projected climate change, in the near-term (2021-2050). Better understanding of the pattern and intensity of changes in rainfall distribution, surface temperature, and the associated changes in food crops yield will be developed and presented to inform sound climate change adaptation strategies in West Africa, and in particular to help prioritize sub-regions and economic sectors. Our approach here integrates regional climate modeling using the MIT Regional Climate Model (MRCM), with analysis of archived observations on climate variables such as rainfall and temperature and concurrent agricultural observations on yield of key food crops grown in West Africa. The ultimate goal is to enable sound planning of climate change adaptation with regard to water availability and food production in this region of Africa.

 

UM6P Project Team

Professor Nabil El Mocayd
Professor Abdelghani Chehbouni
Professor Louay Metougui
Professor Abdelaziz Beljadid
Hasan Karjoun, Ph.D. student
Abdelaziz Chaqdid, Ph.D. student