The vulnerability of social-ecological systems in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) to climate variability and change means that there is an urgent need to better integrate weather and climate information into societal decision-making processes. Long-term climate adaptation in these regions has received increasing attention, with recent initiatives aiming to increase resilience to climate change at timescales of years to decades. Less focus has been given to weather and short-term climate information. However, users are principally interested in shorter timescales (hours to seasons) where actions can immediately reduce the impacts of severe weather events. Focusing on the priority sectors of agriculture and food security, water and disaster management, this paper uses a systematic literature review approach to analyse 61 empirical case studies drawn from academic literature and projects across SSA. We identify the main users of climate services and outline current practices and reported benefits. Barriers that impede the delivery and uptake of climate services are identified and potential strategies for overcoming them outlined based on the reporting of successful practices. Our findings show that greater capacity building of personnel working for National Meteorological and Hydrological Services and Agricultural Extension staff and reinforcing and sustaining collaboration between different stakeholders (climate scientists, hydrologists, extension workers, farmers and other user groups), are essential factors for improving the uptake and utility of weather and climate services to enhance resilience to climate shocks in SSA.

Understanding hydrological processes at catchment scale through the use of hydrological model parameters is essential for enhancing water resource management. Given the difficulty of using lump parameters to calibrate distributed catchment hydrological models in spatially heterogeneous catchments, a multiple calibration technique was adopted to enhance model calibration in this study. Different calibration techniques were used to calibrate the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model at different locations along the Logone river channel. These were: single-site calibration (SSC); sequential calibration (SC); and simultaneous multi-site calibration (SMSC). Results indicate that it is possible to reveal differences in hydrological behavior between the upstream and downstream parts of the catchment using different parameter values. Using all calibration techniques, model performance indicators were mostly above the minimum threshold of 0.60 and 0.65 for Nash Sutcliff Efficiency (NSE) and coefficient of determination (R²) respectively, at both daily and monthly time-steps. Model uncertainty analysis showed that more than 60% of observed streamflow values were bracketed within the 95% prediction uncertainty (95PPU) band after calibration and validation. Furthermore, results indicated that the SC technique out-performed the other two methods (SSC and SMSC). It was also observed that although the SMSC technique uses streamflow data from all gauging stations during calibration and validation, thereby taking into account the catchment spatial variability, the choice of each calibration method will depend on the application and spatial scale of implementation of the modelling results in the catchment.

This paper investigates the potential of using global reanalysis datasets as input for hydrological modelling in the data-scarce Sudano-Sahel region. To achieve this, we used two global atmospheric reanalyses (Climate Forecasting System Reanalysis and European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) ERA-Interim) datasets and one global meteorological forcing dataset WATCH Forcing Data methodology applied to ERA-Interim (WFDEI). These datasets were used to drive the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) in the Logone catchment in the Lake Chad basin. Model performance indicators after calibration showed that, at daily and monthly time steps, only WFDEI produced Nash Sutcliff Efficiency (NSE) and Coefficient of Determination (R²) values above 0.50. Despite a general underperformance compared to WFDEI, CFSR performed better than the ERA-Interim. Model uncertainty analysis after calibration showed that more than 60% of all daily and monthly observed streamflow values at all hydrometric stations were bracketed within the 95 percent prediction uncertainty (95PPU) range for all datasets. Results from this study also show significant differences in simulated actual evapotranspiration estimates from the datasets. Overall results showed that biased corrected WFDEI outperformed the two reanalysis datasets; meanwhile CFSR performed better than the ERA-Interim. We conclude that, in the absence of gauged hydro-meteorological data, WFDEI and CFSR could be used for hydrological modelling in data-scarce areas such as the Sudano-Sahel region.