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Reanalyzing Data Helps Unlock The Mysteries Of Flooding Rains In Africa – Researcher

Reanalyzing Data Helps Unlock The Mysteries Of Flooding Rains In Africa – Researcher

Wanjiru Thoithi, a Kenyan researcher based in South Africa, has reanalyzed weather data to help understand what was happening in the weather system that produced a storm that flooded Durban and other other parts of South Africa, killing over 400 people in April 2022.

Thoithi, a PhD researcher at the University of Capetown and an author on the paper “April 2022 Floods over East Coast South Africa: Interactions between a Mesoscale Convective System and a Coastal Meso-Low,” says that the researchers were able to identify the importance of interactions between two mesoscale weather systems (between five to several hundred kilometers in size) on South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal coast for determining the timing and spatial extent of the extreme rainfall event during 10–12 April 2022.

This is part of her broader research into how and where rain falls on the African continent.

“I am investigating moisture transport into Africa using Lagrangian dispersion models and such models enable us to track the movement of air particles across large spatial scales and identify moisture sources for rainfall that occurs over a given region,” Thoithi says, adding that researchers can use re-analysis datasets as input for such models, an advantage for studies over Africa where observational data is scarce.

“Studying rainfall over vast regions is challenging because observational data is quite scarce over the continent,” she says, “Thankfully there is a variety of data products one can compare to get a clearer picture of rainfall and atmospheric circulation patterns.”

Thoithi says that the implications of her work go beyond floods—this research can also help with agriculture.

“It is crucial for my research to have impact on people’s livelihoods, therefore my approach to research is to provide greater insight into rainfall variability over Sub-Saharan Africa as we rely heavily on rainfall for food production,” she says.

African Research, Africa Solutions

Thoithi was raised in Nairobi, Kenya and had a connection to STEM early on.

“I have always been fascinated by the planet Earth and its workings,” she says, “As a child, nature documentaries possessed an almost numinous quality to me.

Thoithi says that this interest led her to take up geography in high school and later Geographical Science and Oceanography for her undergraduate university studies.

She would go on to study her Honors and Master’s degrees at the University of Capetown’s department of Oceanography.

See Also

Thoithi says that scientists from the Global South understand the unique socioeconomic challenges faced by the region’s populations and can better speak for those populations.

“Their perspective helps to produce solution-based research that generates knowledge that can be used to better the well-being of people in the Global South,” she says, “It’s not science for the sake of science, it’s science for the sake of the people.

Nairobi downtown - capital city of Kenya
Nairobi city center – capital city of Kenya, East AfricaGETTY

Another is scientist from the Global South with a passion for understanding devastating weather patterns is Honduran researcher Jose Martinez-Claros.

In 1998, Martinez-Claros was a school child as Hurricane Mitch crossed Honduras – twice, killing thousands – but that brush with disaster drove him to eventually become an atmospheric physicist who has even flown through storms for work.

Forbes

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