# Towards Resolving Challenges Associated with Climate Change Modelling in Africa
## 1 Introduction  
Climate variability and change are driven by internal and external factors, including natural and anthropogenic forcings dominated by greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The long-term continuous emissions of GHGs have contributed to the increase in global warming, which currently constitutes a serious global challenge and affects many aspects of life, including food security, disease transmission, quality of life, and all economic sectors [1, 2]. The scientific evidence indicates increasing risks of serious and irreversible impacts ofclimate change in business-as-usual pathways associated with GHG emissions [3] Therefore, it is crucial to implement policies to increase mitigation and resilience capacities, especially where population vulnerability to future climate change is high; for instance, the strong dependence of African countries on rain-fed agriculture is significantly linked to their economic potential and growth. The uncertainty of climate change with respect to not only rainfall distribution and magnitude, but also rising temperatures adds stress to crop production [4]. These activities also require high-energy inputs possibly hindering global goals for reducing GHG emissions. Successful adaptation requires the necessary quantification of the magnitude of impacts through targeted research objectives, for example, research that focusses on the understanding of disease transmission processes [5; 6], thresholds of heat stress variability [7; 8], fluctuations in economic situations [9], changes in land use practices [10], plant growth processes (i.e., food crops), among others [11]. For these purposes, modelling is usually required.  
Climate change modelling and related research requires quality data with distinct spatial and temporal resolutions for setup, calibration, and validation [12; 13; 14; 15; 16; 17; 18; 19; 20]. The resolution required often depends on the specific objectives of the modelling task. Information at a regional scale is highly desirable, particularly across the African continent, for practical planning of local issues, such as rain-fed agriculture, water resources availability, and flood management. Often, challenges in acquiring adequate data for the modelling task at hand and the spatial distribution of the data may render certain analyses impossible; for instance, on accounting for small geographic areas with high topographical variability, see [21; 22; 23; 24; 25; 26; 27; 28; 29].  
The objective of this paper is to identify challenges that scientists face when modelling climate change and its impacts over the African continent. We briefly discuss the distribution of researchers generating peer-reviewed publications and the contribution of African-based scientists to the literature over the last decade. The uncertainties, limits, and challenges raised in the literature survey will be investigated in detail and some solutions will be proposed to address these issues. We will also look at how initiatives, such as the German Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) Climate Research for Alumni and Postdocs in Africa (climapAfrica) program, can provide a network to encourage intra-continental collaborations and inspire international ties. The identification of these challenges will assist in delivering actions to address them in terms of better understanding the impacts of climate change on nature and thus on African countries.