1. About the Africa Rainfall Project

1.1. Project goals

The goal of the African Rainfall Project (ARP) is to derive accurate rainfall estimates over Sub-Saharan Africa, with the help of a high-resolution (1km) application of the Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF). Such a resolution will allow the model to better represent rainfall, and in particular, convective precipitation.

This is a unique experiment that has never been performed at such a scale. The model runs on the IBM World Community Grid (WCG), an SCR activity of IBM. These data can be used to:

  • Help scientists better understand these storms and improve forecasting models

  • Produce more accurate rainfall forecasts for sub-Saharan Africa

  • Give farmers more timely information about when to plant, help them obtain insurance

  • Support resilience in the face of climate change

    “This is the first time we’ll be able to map huge parts of Africa for a whole rainy season, and has never been done before at this level of resolution. This is only possible because of the amount of computing power we’ll have through World Community Grid.”* - Nick van de Giesen, Principal Investigator

1.2. The Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF)

These simulation data were produced using the Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF) from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) Mesoscale & Microscale Meteorology Laboratory.

From the NCAR website: “The Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model is a next-generation mesoscale numerical weather prediction system designed for both atmospheric research and operational forecasting applications.

For researchers, WRF can produce simulations based on actual atmospheric conditions (i.e., from observations and analyses) or idealized conditions. WRF offers operational forecasting a flexible and computationally efficient platform, while reflecting recent advances in physics, numerics, and data assimilation contributed by developers from the expansive research community.

WRF is currently in operational use at NCEP and other national meteorological centres as well as in real-time forecasting configurations at laboratories, universities, and companies.”

1.3. The World Community Grid

The WRF model runs on the World Community Grid (WCG), a SCR initiative of IBM.

The WCG relies on volunteers who download a secure software program to their computer. When the computer is idle or not using its full computing power, it will run a simulated experiment in the background. Then, the computer contacts the World Community Grid server to let it know that it has completed the simulation, which is then uploaded to an IBM server. All of this happens unobtrusively.

World Community Grid receives the results volunteers send back (often called work units or research tasks), combines them with hundreds of thousands of results from other volunteers all over the world, and sends them to the Delft research team. The researchers then begin the difficult work of analyzing the data. While this process can take years, it accelerates that would otherwise take decades or might even be impossible.

1.5. More resources