30 April 2014 ESSC Brown Bag/Climate Dynamics Seminar
11:15 am, 541 Deike

On the road to the operationalization of seasonal malaria forecasts

Dr. Andy Morse
Professor of Climate Impacts, School of Environmental Sciences, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, United Kingdom

Seasonal ensemble prediction systems (EPS) are now part of the operational output from the major forecasting centers around the world.  Generally, these initial condition forecasts are run each month to provide probabilistic predictions for six or more months ahead.  The seasonal forecasts have prediction skill particularly in regions that have reliable teleconnections between rainfall and sea surface temperature patterns e.g. ENSO in some tropical regions.
However, the development of impacts models that use these forecasting systems has been slower than might have been anticipated. This mostly due to the complexity for most user and impact modelling communities to utilise the large data outputs from these forecasting systems and the generally low or no skill of the systems in the mid-latitudes.  The majority of the impacts development (food security, water planning, health, energy demand and insurance risk) has been made with R&D systems developed within large collaborative projects e.g. DEMETER and ENSEMBLES both funded by the European Commission. 

This paper discusses the development of the Liverpool Malaria Model initially through a series of R&D projects to its current pre-operational status within (unofficially) ECMWF’s operational EPS.  The talk will reflect of how to make the products relevant to users and will hopefully lead to discussion on how best to capacity build in Africa for the use of the forecast products and the best methods for their dissemination.