KA Report: DRY-CAB

Christopher, Alice and Richard Washington, Professor of Climate Science at the School of Geography and the Environment and Fellow of Keble College, release a radiosonde at Nchila camp.

In late 2022, two Geography undergraduate students undertook pioneering climate change research in north-west Zambia, thanks in part to funding received through a Gordon Smith Award from the Keble Association (KA).

Alice Jardine (2021 Geography), one of the grant recipients, describes Southern Africa as “one of two major locations that have projected land-based drying trends in the future. The changing climate here is set to have a big effect on sectors of the economy such as agriculture and hydroelectric power and hence will have a large impact on a region of the world that has contributed very little to the emission of the greenhouse gases that cause climate change.

This drying is a result of the delayed onset and decreased volume of rainfall of the rainy season which comes in the form of the breakdown of the Congo Air Boundary (CAB) after it has moved southwards in late October/early November.”

Christopher Edmunds (2021 Geography), another recipient, explains that the purpose of the DRY-CAB fieldwork “was to record real-world measurements of the transition from the dry to rainy season in Southern Africa, to see if the observational data we collected matched data currently used in climate models.

My role within the research was primarily releasing radiosondes using helium balloons at 3-hourly intervals, 8 times a day. This allowed for live data to be collected of temperature, humidity, pressure, wind speed and direction. This high-resolution method of data collection shows changes in the weather hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly. I also helped to set up state-of-the-art Laser Imaging Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) systems, which continuously monitored aerosol particles in the atmosphere, providing information about precipitation, wind speed and direction.”

The Gordon Smith Award commemorates a generous bequest to the KA by a long-serving and fondly remembered Geography Fellow at The College. Last year, his widow, Joan Grant Smith, also sadly passed and similarly added to the bequest in her will. Their sons Hugh, Tom, and Patrick are tremendous supporters of the KA and we are very grateful for their family’s generosity.