Emmanuel M.N.A.N. AttohInternational Water Management Institute | IWMI
Emmanuel M.N.A.N. Attoh
PhD
|Climate services|Climate & Disaster Risk| Climate Adaptation| | Hydroclimatology | Ethnoclimatology|
About
45
Publications
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Introduction
Dr. Attoh is a climatologist with over 10 years of experience working in Africa, Europe, and Asia. Having extraordinary interdisciplinary skills, he studies and develops knowledge and innovations to address the complexities of climate variability and change on natural and human systems. He is therefore willing to contribute his expertise to building a climate resilient society, particularly helping low and middle-income countries adapt to climate extremes, and water and food insecurity.
Publications
Publications (45)
The slightest change in rainfall could have a significant impact on rain-fed agriculture in countries like Ghana. This study evaluated for the first time the performance of the statistical downscaling model (SDSM-DC) at 2m spatial resolution in simulating rainfall in Ghana for the base period 1981–2010. It further analysed the projected changes in...
Rice farmers in Northern Ghana are susceptible to climate variability and change with its effects in the form of drought, water scarcity, erratic rainfall and high temperatures. In response, farmers resort to weather and seasonal forecast to manage uncertainties in decision-making. However, there is limited empirical research on how forecast lead t...
Indigenous people are often considered victims of climate change impact rather than agents of adaptation. Emerging studies in Africa have shifted the attention to indigenous knowledge (IK) to support the development of effective climate change adaptation strategies. This study adopted a systematic literature review methodology to analyse the follow...
There are strong calls to integrate scientific and indigenous forecasts to help farmers adapt to climate variability and change. Some studies used qualitative approaches to investigate indigenous people's techniques for forecasting weather and seasonal climate. In this study, we demonstrate how to quantitatively collect indigenous forecast and conn...
Farmers in sub-Saharan Africa face many difficulties when making farming decisions due to unexpected changes in weather and climate. Access to hydro-climatic information can potentially assist farmers to adapt. This study explores the extent to which seasonal climate forecasts can meet hydro-climatic information needs of rice farmers in northern Gh...
Indigenous Peoples and local communities with nature-dependent livelihoods are disproportionately affected by climate change impacts, but their experience, knowledge and needs receive inadequate attention in climate research and policy. Here, we discuss three key findings of a collaborative research consortium arising from the Local Indicators of C...
Indigenous Peoples and local communities are heavily affected by climatic changes. Investigating local understandings of climate change impacts, and their patterned distribution, is essential to effectively support monitoring and adaptation strategies. In this study, we aimed to understand the consistency in climate change impact reports and factor...
In this paper, we present an analysis of summertime atmospheric simulation (June–July 2016) for southern West Africa (sWA) using the RegCM 4.7.1 regional climate model to describe the atmospheric behaviour over the region, and also engage comparisons between the modelled data and observed upper air data acquired during the DACCIWA (Dynamics–Aerosol...
In the context of river basins, the threat of climate change has been extensively studied. However, many of these studies centred on hazard analysis while neglecting the need for comprehensive risk assessments that account for exposure and vulnerability. Hazard analysis alone is not adequate for making adaptive decisions. Thus, to effectively manag...
Global polls have shown that people in high-income countries generally report being more satisfied with their lives than people in low-income countries. The persistence of this correlation, and its similarity to correlations between income and life satisfaction within countries, could lead to the impression that high levels of life satisfaction can...
The effects of climate change depend on specific local circumstances, posing a challenge for worldwide research to comprehensively encompass the diverse impacts on various local social-ecological systems. Here we use a place-specific but cross-culturally comparable protocol to document climate change indicators and impacts as locally experienced an...
In October 2023, IWMI organized a workshop with the National Agency of Civil Aviation and Meteorology (ANACIM) and the support of Alliance Bioversity-CIAT on behalf of the CGIAR Initiative on Climate Resilience, ClimBeR, to launch the AWARE Platform in Senegal. This platform aims to provide early warning, early action, and finance and introduce a d...
This special Research Topic presents results from the project "Unpacking climate impact chains: A new generation of action- and user-oriented climate change risk assessments" (UNCHAIN) consisting of 11 local cases in seven European countries (cf.
Figure 1). The overall objective of the UNCHAIN project was to improve climate change risk assessment f...
The agriculture sector is vital to the world's economy and weather and climate are key drivers that affect the productivity and profitability of agricultural systems. At the same time, weather-related risks pose significant challenges to farmers' livelihoods. Although scientific weather forecast (SFK) is available, many farmers, especially in the G...
It is increasingly recognized that effective climate risk assessments benefit from well-crafted processes of knowledge co-production involving key stakeholders and scientists. To support the co-production of actionable knowledge on climate change, a careful design and planning process is often called for to ensure that relevant perspectives are int...
As the impacts of climate change continue to intensify, the EU is transitioning to a more climate-resilient Europe. Four key policies drive this shift: the European Green Deal, the European Commission Adaptation Strategy launched in 2021, the 2022 Mission on Adaptation to Climate Change and the EU-wide Climate Risk Assessment (EUCRA) due in 2024. T...
As the climate crisis continues to worsen, there is an increasing demand for scientific evidence from Climate Risk and Vulnerability Assessments (CRVA). We present 12 methodological advancements to the Impact Chain-based CRVA (IC-based CRVA) framework, which combines participatory and data-driven approaches to identify and measure climate risks in...
Small-scale farmers encounter various climate risks, which influence local agricultural decision-making. Existing climate risk assessments have concentrated on hazard analysis with little regard to exposure and vulnerability. Using literature review, semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions this study provides insight into climate cha...
Given that climate variability and change present unprecedented challenges to the rail sector, efforts to produce relevant climate data/information for climate risk management and adaptive decision making in the rail sector are gaining traction. However, inadequate understanding of climate change impact and information needs raises several concerns...
The overwhelming global dominance of modern industrialism stifles the visibility of alternative ways of being in the present and of what solutions to large-scale challenges may be appropriate. This paper describes how novel high-tech digital tools can be co-designed with people with different worldviews or ‘ontologies’ to better represent their nor...
Climate change can be an important additional risk for the financial sector. For (large) investments in real estate, it is becoming increasingly important to take climate related risks into account. Yet, generating tailored physical climate risk information to make meaningful decisions about investment portfolios remains difficult. Using literature...
Climate information services (CIS) is touted as an essential tool to support farmers’ decision-making against climate variability and change. However, the current top-down approach to designing CIS limits the reliability, acceptability and uptake of forecast information. The call for co-production and knowledge integration approach to CIS has thus...
The livelihood of many farmers across the globe is affected by climate variability and change. Providing weather and seasonal climate information is expected to support farmers to make adaptive farming decisions. Yet, for many farmers, scientific forecast information provided remains unreliable for decision-making. Scholars have called for the need...
The Nasia catchment is the reservoir with significant surface water resources in Northern Ghana and home to numerous subsistence farmers engaged in rainfed and dry season irrigation farming. Yet, there is little understanding of the hydro-climatic and land use/cover conditions of this basin. This study investigated trends, relationships and changes...
The Sapelli smartphone application aims to support any community to engage in citizen science activities to address local concerns and needs. However, Sapelli was designed and developed not as a piece of technology without a context, but as the technical part of a socio-technical approach to establish a participatory science process. This paper pro...
The Nasia catchment is the reservoir for significant surface water resources in Northern Ghana and home to numerous subsistence farmers engaged in rainfed and dry season irrigation farming. Yet there is little understanding of the hydro-climatic and land use /cover conditions of this basin. We analyzed 50 years of minimum (Tmin) and maximum tempera...
The impact of climate induced sea level rise (SLR) is a major threat, likely to continue even if greenhouse gas concentrations were stabilized. SLR will not be geographically uniform. Developing countries are most impacted because of their low adaptive capacity. This study reviewed the most recent scientific evidence of the impact, vulnerability an...
Climate variability and its impacts on the agriculture system is clearly evident in Ghana. Weather and seasonal climate forecast information service has been in operation for some time in the country. However, farmers generally do not find the information useful for their farm-level decision making. Forecast accuracy, untimeliness, and mismatch of...
This study examined the effect of fires on the distribution of SOCS under different vegetation types. Soil samples were randomly collected on 34 plots and 24 sample points at depths 0-10 cm, 10-20 cm and 20-30 cm per plot in Northern Region of Ghana. Experimentally, 50m x 50m plots were marked out on burnt and unburnt lands under four different veg...
Hydro-climatic information has a potential to improve agricultural productivity under climate variability. Recent developments in information sharing platforms (Environmental Virtual Observatories, EVOs) could make information provisioning more actionable. Here we present the results of a diagnostic study for the development of a hydro-climatic EVO...
The impact of climate variability and change is real in Ghana; a phenomenon affecting several sectors of the economy and ecological zones. Critical among these sectors is agriculture for which Northern Ghana is the most susceptible as it falls within the Guinea and Sudan savannah ecological zones. Early warning systems such as climate information s...
The impact of climate variability and change is real in Ghana; a phenomenon affecting several sectors of the economy and ecological zones. Critical among these sectors is agriculture for which Northern Ghana is the most susceptible as it falls within the Guinea and Sudan savannah ecological zones. Early warning systems such as climate information s...
The study examines how farmers’ observations of climate variability and change correspond with 42 years (1970-2011) meteorological data of temperature and rainfall. It shows how farmers in the Northern Region of Ghana adjust to the changing climate and explore the various obstacles that hinder the implementation of their adaptation strategies. With...
Biomass burning in Northern Ghana is a major cause for concern because of its potential contribution to global warming, hence climate change. This study assessed the emission of trace gases from human activities in the Guinea savanna of Northern Ghana using the guidelines of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Carbon content of biomass w...
Biomass burning in Northern Ghana is a major cause for concern because of its potential contribution to global warming, hence climate change. This study assessed the emission of trace gases from human activities in the Guinea savanna of Northern Ghana using the guidelines of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Carbon content of biomass w...
The research was conducted as a case study in Dindo community of the Tolon/Kumbungu District in Northern Ghana during the 2010 rainy season. The study determined the volume of soil eroded and the nutrient levels of the eroded and non-eroded soils in both vegetated and non–vegetated areas of the farmlands. Catch pits of dimensions 0.60 m × 0.60 m ×...