Research Summary
African Meteorology:
- Dr Cornforth's scientific research is focussed on improving our understanding of the fundamental dynamics of African weather systems, downstream tropical cyclogenesis, associated rainfall variability and predictability of extreme precipitation events. As such she has been actively involved in African-based field campaigns. Current work is focussed on improving the understanding of the climate drivers in West Africa to provide estimates of future climate change and its possible consequences that will be useful to government and NGO decision-makers in the next IPCC Assessment Report 5. She has authored several papers on the fundamental dynamics of the African monsoon and is currently on the Editorial Committee and chapter lead author for the first Forecaster's Handbook for West Africa which will document forecasting methodologies and 'state of the art' scientific understanding. She has supervised eleven MSc dissertations, currently has two PhD students and manages several research projects.
Knowledge Exchange and Science-Policy:
- As Director of AfClix, and NERC Knowledge Exchange Fellow, Dr Cornforth has responsibility for establishing and leading ground-based initiatives in Sub-Saharan Africa to ensure that cutting-edge climate science can be accessed to inform climate-related policy in Africa. Through coupling climate science projects with AfClix, the expertise and actions of relevant institutions, agencies and stakeholders can be integrated better to broker ground-based dialogue and promote locally relevant adaptation strategies in the face of recurring crisis in the African Sahel. AfClix is now emerging as an important project for 1) identifying how our climate science can play a consistent and substantive role in reducing people's vulnerabilities to weather-related hazards in Africa; and 2) following this through with action on the ground to promote resilience. Indeed it provided the core of a Perspective article co-authored by Dr Cornforth and an international team that was just published in the July 2013 issue of Nature Climate Change. The paper is titled "Building resilience to face recurring environment crisis in African Sahel". The interdisciplinary effort involved the challenging 'framing' of the real-time monitoring of the 2011-2012 Sahel drought-to-flooding sequence within the context of a contemporary social science paradigm. Dr Cornforth has also co-authored one of only ten case studies published in the recent UNISDR Report entitled "Using Science for Disaster Risk Reduction". She has worked as an Editor on the Royal Society's Special Issue in Philosophical Transactions A on Water, Life and Civilisation. Dr Cornforth has over 12 years experience collaborating with African Institutes, National Met Services and Government and NGO policy makers and has worked in Ethiopia, Ghana, Senegal and Sudan, with new projects starting in Burkina Faso, Kenya, Mali, Niger and Tanzania.
- A number of AfClix impact case studies can be accessed from this web page, including the contribution prepared for the UNISDR STAG report.
- For project web pages see Africa Climate Exchange
Things to do now
Links
Contact Me
- Visit me:
3L70 in Meteorology
- Email me:
Ros Cornforth
- Telephone me:
+44 (0) 118 378 7392
[an error occurred while processing this directive]
