Short Wave - In Mozambique, Meteorologists Can't Keep Up With Climate Change

Episode Date: January 15, 2020

Accurate weather forecasting can be a matter of life or death. So countries with less money like Mozambique face a big challenge. They can't build and maintain their own weather radar or satellites. Instead, they rely on weather maps created by wealthier countries, like the U.S. NPR climate reporter Becky Hersher tells us what that means for Mozambique, a country where the weather's gotten worse as the climate changes. Reach the show by emailing [e-mail] pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Maddie Safaya here with the one, the only, Rebecca Hersher. Hey, Becky, what's up? Hey, I'm great. So people might know that you report on climate change for NPR. Yeah, maybe. Like my mom knows that. But today we're talking about a very simple thing, which is what is the weather?

Can you tell me? What's the weather? Like today? Yeah. It's, okay, so it's 10.30. We're looking at just bright and, shiny skies, no chance of rain, and it's about 27 degrees. You got like nice hourly.

Oh, yeah, I'm looking at every hour. Very satisfied what your phone is telling you. And the reason is because your phone has access to really detailed weather information from our federal government. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration sends lots of accurate information about weather all over the country. It's a huge luxury. It's one that a lot of places don't have. Yeah, I mean, I bet.

It sounds expensive. Yeah, it is. And it takes a lot of money to build and maintain the weather radar and satellites, so much so that a lot of countries, especially countries with less money, they don't do it or they can't do it. And they have to rely on weather maps as a result that were created by other countries, wealthier countries like the U.S., for those other countries. So these countries with less money have to rely on other people's data. Exactly, which is less accurate. And it's actually, it's a big deal because as the climate changes, weather is getting more extreme. It's getting more variable. And so the ability to tell people when that weather is coming, what it's going to be, it can actually be life or death. So today on the show, Becky, you're going to take us to a place that has to plan for the weather without their own tools to do the planning. Okay, so you visited a country that doesn't have super great meteorological data. Yeah, and there are a lot of countries that have this issue, but I chose Mozambique in Southern Africa.

Okay, why is that? Well, Mozambique is a good example of a place where you don't have great weather data and you're dealing with the effects of climate change in a really obvious way. So they're susceptible to cyclones, to droughts, and to floods. There's a very long coastline, a big river delta, and Mozambique was hit by two big cyclones last year and they're experiencing a drought this year. Wow. So yeah, it's a place where these issues are front and center. So what does that actually look like for meteorologists in Mozambique? They basically can't tell what the weather's going to be.

Is that right? Yeah, not that accurately at least. So to see how it unfolds, I went to visit Mozambique's National Institute of Meteorology, and I hung out with the lead meteorologist, Akasio Tembe. Well, he did his job for a morning. And on the day I went, it was actually a good example because there was rain in the forecast, which is normal. And the capital, Maputo, where we were, is pretty flood prone.

Like, if it gets maybe an inch and a half of rain, some of the streets will flood. Oh, that's not a lot. Yeah, not a lot. Not a lot. Not good. So with rain in the forecast, while I was there, Tembé is just sitting at his computer. He has all these tabs open. And he is looking at weather maps from Europe, from Japan, from the U.S. Navy, from the U.S. National Oceanic and atmospheric administration, like up the road here, thousands of miles away. And he's just like going through these tabs and trying to figure out what's going to happen.

But the resolution of the maps he's looking at over Mozambique, it's not that great. Oh, okay. Like it's just like big things of clouds over the whole country. Yeah, no, it's not good. Yeah, it makes his job super hard. So, like, on this particular day, he wanted to know when it would rain and how much, but instead all he could really say was that it was going to rain some amount, some time in the afternoon, in some part of the area around the capital.

Which just is not enough information if you want to, like, close roads or make sure that people aren't in danger. And he told me, like, right now, we are using global models, but what we need is a weather model all our own, for Mozambique with better resolution because the weather threats are getting more severe. What kind of weather threats are we talking about? So he's specifically talking about weather that's worse because the climate is changing. He was really explicit about that.

So, for example, the two cyclones that hit this year, cyclones can happen in a normal year, right, without climate change. But it's a lot more likely that you'll get two big storms forming in one year with climate change as the Earth gets hotter. And if you're Acacio Tembe, you're sitting in your office, he and his colleagues were not able to tell where the worst flooding from those storms was going to happen until after they made landfall. Right. And then at that point, it's too late. You're not, you know, you're just fixing things instead of trying to prevent things from being damaged or people. Exactly, which is not where you want to be. So what do they need? Well, you need better weather forecasting. And that means you need two things. You need better data about what is happening. And you need better data about what is happening. And you need better computer models about what. could happen in the future.

Sure. And I talked to the scientist in Maputo in the capital, who basically trains all of the meteorologists in Mozambique. He works at the university, Eduardo Man Lane University there. His name is Antonio Kefas. And he is very focused on the first thing, the data itself. They used to say garbage in, garbage out on the model. So the model itself doesn't solve anything.

He's talking about better raw local measurements, about like wind and humidity and rain, like really basic stuff. And that is something that we really take for granted in the U.S. Africa, as a continent as a whole, maybe excluding a little bit, South Africa, the scarcity of metrological data. Even on the continent side, and it's worse when you go to the ocean side. So like the ocean side, he's talking about the data that's actually collected along the coast out at sea, which is where cyclones form. It's where a lot of weather comes from.

And there is just not a lot of reliable local data there. Are there any efforts to fix that to get more data? Yeah. So there's this one example that I think really encapsulates what's going on. So in the early 2000s, Mozambique's government and the World Bank and this German company came together and they installed two weather radar stations on the coast of Mozambique. Okay. And one of the two towers was in the town of Shai Shai, which is only like three hours from the capital. And I was going there anyway.

And I wanted to see it because I had heard that the president himself, cut the ribbon when it was opened in 2004. Presidents love to cut ribbons, no matter where you are. They love it. So I visit this place, and the guy who unlocks the gate for me is this guy Salamau Mouse, and he's the janitor for the local meteorology office. And for years, he has been walking like three miles up this hill to dust and sweep and keep it clean. Can we go inside?

Is it open? It's a steep red ladder up into a hole in the ceiling. Wow. Can you hear that? Yeah, you're like very echoy. Yeah, it's like a dome, like on a telescope sort of. And it looks fine, but Salamow Mouse tells me this story while we're standing up there in the dark. And it goes like this.

So the radar is installed in 2004. And before that, people in this area, and he's from here, they didn't take the weather forecast very seriously because often they were wrong. So like when there was flooding predicted, people would just stay in their homes. They'd leave their cattle out in the low-lying fields and often bad things would happen. So then in 2008, four years after the radar is installed, there's this storm. And there's heavy rain and there's wind. And the local meteorologists can see from the radar data that the storm is stalled. Like, it's not moving.

And so they put out a warning. They're like, hey, guys, be careful. The storm is not over. It's going to be like two to three days. Do not go out. Like, don't go to low-lying areas. And they were right. Okay.

And people were super impressed. Like, Salomon Mouse remembers people saying, like, were you talking to God with that thing? Oh, okay. Wow. So, yeah, this radar made people really, really proud. Proud's good. But then shortly after that, the radar started to malfunction. That's what they do.

They love to do that. They're really hard to keep calibrated. And it's extra hard when you're not in a place that's had radar in the past. There's not a ton of expertise in the area. The company that made it was from Germany. And local technicians didn't necessarily have all the expertise they needed or the parts. Right. And in the end, this particular radar towers, it stopped working altogether around 2013.

And what really kills me is, like, Mouse, the janitor, has been keeping it clean anyway ever since, like going there every few days. I have to imagine that's like extremely frustrating, right? He's like maintaining it, keeping it clean, like ready for somebody to come in there, but he has no idea if and when somebody's going to actually make it work again. Yeah, I asked him this because I was like, this must drive you up the wall. And he was like, of course it does. Yes, it is extremely annoying. And he still hopes it'll start working again.

So if it doesn't start working again, is weather radar in that area the only way meteorologists can get information about the local weather or is there something else that they can do? Yeah, that's the big question. And a lot of meteorologists and climate scientists I talk to about this issue, they said that in the long term for places like Mozambique, the better option may be satellite data. There are already weather satellites up there in orbit collecting information about a lot of the world. And if you could just get that information to the people that need it, it might be a better source. But it's an enormous amount of data that's coming down. So you need great internet.

You need computing power. You need more training for the people who are actually going to use this data. Plus, you need a better weather model to put it all into. And all of that is super expensive. And I think we all know that governments generally don't have lots of cash around just waiting to be invested in science, generally speaking. No? Like the science slush fund? That hasn't been something that you've...

No. I mean, we're doing all right over here. but it's not great. Yeah, exactly. And Mozambique is no different. Like, Mozambique is not a rich country. They do not have a ton of money lying around to, like, totally upgrade their weather systems, or they would have already done it.

And every time there's a disaster, that's more money out the door to help with the immediate recovery, which is important, but it's a vicious cycle. Exactly. And actually, the Paris Climate Agreement has something built into it to help countries like Mozambique deal with the effects of climate change. and prepare for the future. It's called capacity building. And it's a mechanism that's supposed to have richer countries,

the countries that historically contributed the most to climate change, help foot the bill for smaller countries, countries that didn't contribute so much to climate change to prepare. Right. And I feel like that's just going to be a question that keeps coming up, kind of over and over, which is who should shoulder the burden for the challenges that are caused by climate change, right?

Yeah. Yeah, it's a really hard question. And there's what should happen and there's what is happening too. Like up until now, even though most countries say they agree with the idea that richer countries should help foot the bill, the actual amount of money that's changing hands is relatively small. All right, Rebecca Herscher, I appreciate you. I appreciate you too. Today's episode was produced by Rebecca Ramirez and edited by Viet Le. Peter Alina helped out with audio engineering and Emily Vaughn fact-checked this episode.

I'm Maddie Safaya, and this is NPR's shortwave. See you tomorrow. Thank you.