Africa

Following devastating floods in 2020, five successive failed rainy seasons caused drought which exposed millions of people to acute food shortages in East Africa. The field project, MASIKA, is the first of its kind and aims to understand the atmospheric processes operating at the start the rainy season. 

Climate change is expected to impose a considerable burden on the southern African region as it is one of two land-based areas of the planet where large-scale drying is projected to occur in future decades. A lot of the early summer drying is expected to result from the late onset of the rains after the six month long dry season. However much of what we know depends entirely on models rather than observations. In an effort to sharpen our understanding, a team from Oxford joined up with the Zambian Met Department from August to November 2022 to compile a comprehensive dataset on the onset of the rainy season as part of the NERC funded DRYCAB project.

Dr Emma Howard, recent doctoral graduate from the African Climate team in SoGE and member of the UMFULA research project, has been awarded the Royal Meteorological Society's prestigious Malcolm Walker prize.

New funding from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office will support global research and practice to improve water security for 10 million people in Africa and Asia, through Oxford University's REACH programme led by SoGE and the Smith School.

Professor of the Human Geography of Africa

Congratulations to Patricia Daley (Professor of the Human Geography of Africa), who has been recognised in the influential Black Powerlist 2021, published by Powerlist Magazine on 17 November.

Hundreds of millions of tons of dust are blown off the Sahara desert each year. This dust interferes with the climate system and is capable of both cooling and heating the atmosphere depending on its height, size, shape and colour. It also interacts with cloud formation and weather systems like tropical cyclones. Being able to represent the location and quantity of dust in models is really important as these are the tools we use to make weather forecasts and climate projections.

Dr Amber Murrey is pleased to announce the launch of a new online postgraduate course, Decolonising Research Methodologies. The course is a collaborative project between Oxford and UNISA and is open to PhD/DPhil students in the social sciences at Oxford and universities in Africa. The course is free for all enrolled students and there are funds available to subsidise the costs of internet data/devices. Application deadline: 16 April

On 5th March, the School of Geography and the Environment became an international hub for decolonizing conservation, by hosting the panel 'The Future of Conservation: COP26 and Beyond'. Born out of #DecoloniseConservation, an engagement campaign from XR Youth Solidarity, the panel was a call to action to begin building solidarity ties between Indigenous and local community leaders and academics, in order to bring a united front to COP26 and seek protections for the rights of over 1.65 billion Indigenous peoples, local communities and Afro-descendants in high biodiversity areas.