From left to right:  Temitope S. Egbebiyi; Kwesi Akumenyi Quagraine and Siyabusa Mkhulani

The University of Cape Town, in partnership with the University of East Anglia, UK, has established an exchange programme on Climate Change, made possible through the Newton Fund (NRF/RCUK). The PhD researcher exchange seeks to bring together student researchers and their supervisors in order to foster long-term collaborations between research groups and individuals from both institutions to focus on areas of synergy, such as:

• Understanding the climate system, including the ocean and atmosphere
•  Developing capacity to cope with a changing climate – in particular the integrated modelling of impacts, and adaptation in a developing country context.

The programme also welcomes exchanges in other climate change related topics, including energy and mitigation.

This year, the three Faculty of Science PhD researchers who have been selected for the exchange are: Temitope S. Egbebiyi, Kwesi Akumenyi Quagraine and Siyabusa Mkhulani, from the Climate System Analysis Group (CSAG) in the Department of Environmental & Geographical Science.

Temitope’s research focuses on projecting the timing of climate in terms of departure from historical variability and its impacts on crop yield over West Africa.

Kwesi’s research focuses on advancing our understanding of the covariability of climate processes and features relevant to southern Africa.

Siyabusa’s research seeks to address the integration of seasonal forecast information of crop models for climate variability management for small-scale farmers of South Africa.

Temitope, Kwesi and Siyabusa will travel to the University of East Anglia in the UK to undertake their respective research until the end of the 2017. We wish them well in their research endeavours.