Off to East Africa

Hi Folks,
By popular demand I'll be reopening this blog for a few short weeks to document my upcoming trip to eastern Africa. I make no promises about the frequency or quality of posts. I believe it will largely depend on the availability of internet connections and just how tired I am. But as with V2 I feel like my travels may be interesting enough to the average person that I'll bug you by writing about them.

As I write this first post I'm sitting at the gate at RDU waiting to head first to London then Nairobi tomorrow. This is the first stop on a 2 1/2 week trip which will also take me to Kampala in Uganda, Mwanza in Tanzania, and back to Kenya where I will visit the town of Kisumu on the eastern shore of Lake Victoria. This trip overseas is supported by a collaborative project with several groups from NCSU to improve the observational, modeling, and forecasting capabilities of the community of countries surrounding Lake Victoria.

My team at NCSU, the Cloud and Precipitation Processes and Patterns Group (CPPPG) for those of you scoring at home, will contribute our knowledge of observational systems. Our tasks are threefold: 1) to document the precipitation occurring on or around the lake, 2) to collect information on the current state of observations around the lake, and 3) to make recommendations about how to improve the network in the next few years. A large portion of this will be evaluating how a scanning weather radar can be put to good use and making recommendations as to where to put the radar and what type of instrument to purchase.

One obvious question is why we became interested in Lake Victoria in the first place. I think there are two simple answers. First, in my opinion, the scientific community needs to invest serious capital in observational networks around the globe. When faced with a large, complex problem such as global climate change the first step is to collect as much information as possible about the current state of the system and how it may be changing. While we have a high observational density in the States and elsewhere, large portions of the globe go unobserved. Thus we are missing many opportunities to measure crucial changes that may be taking place. The second reason relates to the lake itself and the socioeconomic support it provides to the surrounding community. Hundreds of thousands of fishermen, farmers, and everyday people depend on the lake for water and their livelihoods. With the population in the vicinity of the lake increasing rapidly, there will inevitably be an increase in demand without obvious changes to supply. Ask any geopolitical observer and they will tell you that rights of water supply are likely to dominate future conflicts. Having a better understanding of the weather dynamics, including high quality rain rate observations that weather radars can provide, can help to provide insight into how much water is truly available within the larger Lake Victoria basin.

So there, I've rambled on quite enough for my first post. I hope you've found some of what I've said interesting. Posts in the next two days are likely to be sparse as I'm about to undertake 16+ hours of flying time followed by fun-filled jet-lagged meetings on Friday.

Hope you're all well,
Casey