CONNECTIONS ACROSS CONTINENTS: YOUTH CITIZEN SCIENCE AND WEATHER DATA SHARING IN CÔTE D’IVOIRE (Invited Presentation)

Accurate weather data is critical to meet 21^st century challenges and the African continent is acutely vulnerable to a changing climate. Additionally, there has been a reduction in the number of weather stations reporting since the 1980s across Africa. In Côte d’Ivoire 98% of the agriculture is rainfed, and having accurate accounting of local precipitation and temperature regimes for the purposes of planning and prediction is critical to growing food in a world with changing precipitation patterns. As a part of this project scientists and students in Côte d’Ivoire and the United States are working as part of the Trans African Hydrometeorology Network (TAHMO) University to University (U2U) program to build a network of youth scientists in the region surrounding Université Jean Lorougnon Guédé de Daloa (UJLG). Since April 2022 students at these schools manually recorded daily rainfall and temperature data using analog tools and entered them into an online platform (google sheets). The raw data from this platform is then quality checked and fed to an interactive web app (R Shiny) that the Ivoirian and US students at San José State University in California, as well as anyone else who visits the website, can access. The objectives of this project are to (1) provide opportunities for Ivoirian youth to learn about climate and weather data using a hands-on approach in their local area (2) provide opportunities to university students for capacity building between African and US institutions (3) to contribute to increasing the amount and quality of climate data across the African continent specifically to improve weather information for use by farmers. This work supports UN Sustainable development goal two, zero hunger, by laying the groundwork for enhanced agricultural resilience to a changing climate as well as number four, a quality education by exposing youth to the scientific process of data collection and visualization.