Climate-related events affected at least 13 million people across Africa in 2025. Over the last decade alone extreme weather has affected populations in Africa disproportionately. Tropical Cyclone Freddy (Feb 2023) caused widespread flooding and led to over 1,500 deaths, and in 2015/16 a drought in southern Africa led to widespread crop failure and food insecurity for 40 million people.
Despite advances in forecasting, millions of people remain at risk because warnings do not always reach them in time, are not trusted or do not provide the support needed to take protective action. Household surveys carried out in Madagascar, Malawi and Mozambique found that, although most people (90% in Madagascar, 80% in Malawi and 77% in Mozambique) received warnings about approaching tropical cyclones, fewer than half evacuated after receiving an alert.
In this new study, researchers from the University of Bristol's Cabot Institute for the Environment, working with academics from the UK, Europe and southern Africa, investigated why early warnings do not always reach people in time or prompt them to take protective action. They outline six priorities to strengthen early warning systems and help ensure warnings reach everyone.
Findings from this study show that many of the barriers to uptake, of these often life-saving warnings, were not receiving warnings in sufficient time, scepticism about their content, and involuntary immobility or limited resources to evacuate.
Lizzie Kendon, Professor of Climate Science at the University of Bristol's Cabot Institute for the Environment, and the study's lead author, said: "Africa is hugely vulnerable to the devastating impacts of severe weather events. Early warning systems require more than accurate forecasts. We must ensure that warnings reach everyone, communicate risks clearly and support people to take appropriate protective action. This includes being prepared for unprecedented events of the future. Achieving this requires collaboration between governments, scientists, emergency services, communication providers and local communities."
The research team outline six priority intervention actions to tackle issues around lack of trust in forecasts, involving the affected communities towards achieving local ownership of climate information and response actions. These are:
- Understanding risks of unprecedented events
- Stress-testing of Early Warning Systems (EWS)
- Equipping national hydrometeorological services
- Community participation toward resilience-building and vulnerability-focused EWS
- Integrating local and scientific knowledge into EWS
- Strengthening coordination across agencies
Professor Kendon added: "As the United Nations' Early Warnings for All (EW4All) initiative approaches its 2027 deadline, which aims to ensure everyone worldwide is protected by early warning systems for natural hazards, our recommendations support a shift, from the provision of warnings to enabling action, essential for EWS to save lives at scale.
"The reality is that climate change will bring unprecedented extremes, well outside the scope of the historical record, and likely out of the coping range of local and indigenous methods. Therefore, it is critical we understand these risks and, for anticipatory action, we need to think far ahead and not just rely on past experiences."
The study is funded by REPRESA supported by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) in the UK and the International Development Research Council (IDRC) in Canada under the CLARE program.
Paper
'Opportunities for increasing resilience to changing severe weather in southern Africa: 'Early Action and Enhanced Adaptive Capacity for All' by Elizabeth J. Kendon et al. in Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS).
