Nowcasting sharpens weather forecasting

A new Africa-wide system is enhancing short-term weather forecasting and early warning systems through advanced satellite technology.

The African Meteorological Satellite Application Facility (AMSAF) specialises in nowcasting, the rapid prediction of weather conditions over the next 0-6 hours. This aims to enable faster responses to severe storms, flooding, and other extreme weather events.

The facility can enable national meteorological and hydrological services to improve their own short-term forecasts, making them more robust and tailored to regional hazards and national priorities. AMSAF supports the United Nations Early Warnings for All initiative and the African Union’s AMHEWAS framework, strengthening multi-hazard early warning systems across Africa.

Severe weather in parts of Africa, including storms and tornadoes, has in recent years led to flooding and significant damage to infrastructure, resulting in fatalities and the displacement of thousands. Each year, millions of people in these regions are affected by extreme events, highlighting the urgent need for timely and accurate weather information.

“The AMSAF represents an important step in supporting African countries to take full ownership of their weather forecasting capabilities,” says Phil Evans, director-general of EUMETSAT.

“By advancing the development of locally tailored satellite products, we are helping strengthen resilience to extreme weather and support sustainable development across the continent.”

The AMSAF will establish a network of regional nowcasting centres across Africa. Together, these centres will serve Western, Eastern, Central and Southern Africa, and the ACMAD (African Centre of Meteorological Applications for Development based in Niger) will contribute to this network.  

Using data from Meteosat Third Generation satellites, the AMSAF centres will produce nowcasts to support timely decision-making at national levels. Each centre will operate with local or cloud-based processing infrastructure and be supported by a comprehensive capacity-building programme.

The AMSAF is established by the African Union Commission under the EU-funded Strengthening Early Warning in Africa (SEWA) project, part of the European Commission’s Global Gateway Africa–EU Space Partnership Programme. SEWA is jointly implemented by EUMETSAT, the African Union Commission (AUC) and the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF).

As part of this effort, and in recognition of the importance of MTG data for the African continent, EUMETSAT will this year expand access to MTG data across Africa, notably by increasing data bandwidth on its operational EUMETCast‑Africa dissemination system. This expansion aims to enable the AMSAF and national forecasters to benefit from improved data availability.

The Meteosat-12 YouTube livestream provides a continuously updated view of Africa from a geostationary orbit 36,000 km above Earth, using RGB GeoColour imagery combined with lightning observations. Updated every 10 minutes with a slight processing delay, the imagery supports weather forecasting and nowcasting by helping meteorologists identify rapidly developing severe weather systems. The feed forms part of the Meteosat Third Generation (MTG) mission, which improves on previous Meteosat satellites with higher-resolution imagery, faster refresh rates, and expanded spectral observations, including lightning detection across Africa and Europe.