Group works to improve forecasts on Lake Victoria
Weather causes estimated 3,000 to 5,000 deaths per year
As many as 5,000 people each year lose their lives in severe weather on East Africa’s Lake Victoria, and scientists at Boulder’s National Center for Atmospheric Research are heading toward the finish line of a project aimed at changing that.
NCAR has a key piece of a three-year, international effort to develop a detailed marine forecasting system for one of the largest freshwater lakes in the world, shared primarily by Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya.
Known as the HIGH impact Weather Lake System project, or HIGHWAY, its goal is to increase the use of weather information, helping countries in the Lake Victoria Basin to distribute timely forecasts and warnings to those who may be at risk.
“It has huge importance for the region,” said NCAR project scientist Rita Roberts, a principal investigator on HIGHWAY. “It supports so much of the economy and the livelihood of so many people.”
Roberts said estimates of the annual death toll on Lake Victoria of 3,000 to 5,0000 — primarily commercial fishermen and small boat and ferry occupants — are drawn from the annual reports of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
“If you ever look online at the kind of boats they go out in, they are not very substantial,” Roberts said. “The outflow (from thunderstorms) comes down, hits the water and creates higher wave heights on the lake that can cause these boats to capsize, and incredible amounts of lightning come with these storms.
“There have been efforts to get the fishermen to wear life jackets. But at least anecdotally, what I have heard is that they don’t want to wear or bring the life vests, because they take up space” that could be devoted to their catch.
Joseph Omer, of Jinja, Uganda, told the World Meteorological Organization, “As fishermen, the problem that we face is that we encounter strong winds, fog, heavy clouds and water spouts. They just show up unexpectedly, making it difficult for us to do our work well. We are struggling.”
NCAR’s role in the project, managed by the World Meteorological Organization and fueled by $510,000 in funding from the U.K. Department for International Development, includes leading a field campaign that wraps in December, to help determine how nighttime thunderstorms form and develop over the lake. It produces some $600 million worth of fish each year, upon which some 35 million people depend directly or indirectly, according to a news release.
Scientists working on HIGHWAY are taking measurements from an array of observing instruments, including groundbased radars, balloonborne radiosondes, as well as buoys on the lake surface, to develop an effective early warning system for high-impact weather events over the water.
The goal is to increase the accuracy and timeliness of short-term weather predictions, including nowcasts, using such techniques as animating radar images and determining where storms are headed based on current conditions. They also are sharing best practices for quality control of, and archiving, radar data.
Researchers with NCAR and its managing entity, the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research — Roberts cited both Paul Kucera and Martin Steinson at UCAR — also are installing a network of lowcost, 3-D-printed automatic weather stations in the Lake Victoria Basin. NCAR is providing logistical support for HIGHWAY, including posting online displays of field campaign observations and archiving data from the campaign.
With advanced Doppler radars being installed in the Lake Victoria region, Roberts and NCAR scientist
Jim Wilson have been training local meteorological agencies to interpret radar images of complex and sometimes rapidly evolving conditions.
“There is one radar on the south side of the lake that has been collecting data over the lake and it is one of the best tools that is going to help them,” Roberts said. “It sees not only the storms, but it also sees the outflows over the lake. It is going to be very useful for them to trace a lot of these winds over the lake. That is a huge plus for this project, and now Uganda has installed a radar on the north side of the lake. And these tools are going to be tremendous for them to use in this early warning system.”
The international effort in which NCAR is participating is part of a larger 10year initiative of the World Weather Research Programme called HIWeather, which aims to boost early warning systems across the world.