Aug. 7, 2025
Call to contribute to advancing urban climate research in Africa
5-minute survey to shape climate research priorities for African cities
The CAIAC (Climate Analysis in African Cities) project aims to co-create high-resolution climate data tailored to the specific challenges of African cities, with a focus on extreme heat and flooding, in alignment with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) climate scenarios. To ensure the project responds to real-world needs and priorities, the project team invites experts and stakeholders to share their perspective on:
- the cities to be prioritised,
- relevant climate indicators and
- urban climate research priorities.
The project, contributes to and funded by the ESA Climate Change Initiative (CCI), uses Earth Observation (EO) data from CCI to assess past and future climate changes across many African cities. The data serves as input to train process models for urbanisation, flooding, and heat extremes, while other CCI EO data validates the model outputs. The results will address heat extremes and flooding in African cities, with the aim of developing climate trend analysis for a city in every country in Africa.
Take part in the survey now
The survey is available here: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/e/C688kT4F40
It takes about 5 to10 minutes to complete and is open until the end of August 2025. The survey is available in English, French, and Portuguese – simply select your preferred language at the top of the form. Please feel free to share the link with your colleagues.
For more information, contact: Dr Koen De Ridder (koen.deridder@vito.be), VITO – Flemish Institute for Technological Research, Belgium (www.vito.be).
In September, a series of new projects on climate change and cities will be launched. These projects will join the portfolio of R&D projects within ESA's Climate Change Initiative that are developing individual Earth Climate Variables or combining and exploiting them to address major climate science challenges and support the development of climate modelling, policy and action, i.e. the Paris Agreement.
About the project
CAIAC is an ESA Climate Change Initiative funded project compromising a consortium of the Flemish Institute for Technological Research (VITO), the African Centre of Meteorological Applications for Development (ACMAD), and the University of Ottawa. The project aims to co-create high-resolution climate data tailored to the specific challenges of African cities, with a focus on extreme heat and flooding, in alignment with IPCC climate scenarios. By integrating Climate Change Initiative Earth Observation data with high-resolution urban climate models, the project will deliver freely accessible climate datasets for African cities by the end of 2026.