| By Laura Millan Africa has established the continent’s first space agency to boost Earth observation and data sharing at a time when a more hostile global context is limiting the availability of climate and weather information. The African Space Agency opened its doors last month under the umbrella of the African Union and is headquartered in Cairo. The new organization, which is still being set up and hiring people in key positions, will coordinate existing national space programs. It aims to improve the continent’s space infrastructure by launching satellites, setting up weather stations and making sure data can be shared across Africa and beyond. “Space activities on the continent have been happening in a very fragmented fashion,” said Meshack Kinyua, a space engineer and an Africa space policy veteran who now oversees capacity-building at the agency. “The African Space Agency brings a coordination mechanism and economies of scale — it puts all members of the African Union at an equal level in terms of gathering data that they can access according to their needs.”  The African Space Agency in Cairo on April 20. Photographer: Ahmed Gomaa/Xinhua/Getty Images Africa is the world’s poorest continent and its people are among the most vulnerable to the extreme weather events made worse by climate change, despite contributing much less to the warming of the planet than those in developed countries. The lack of high-resolution weather and climate data prevents governments from alerting citizens when extreme weather events approach, and scientists can’t accurately predict long-term trends because the data in their models lacks detail. The African Space Agency is a step toward changing that, Kinyua said. The agency also aims to scale up some successful initiatives happening across the continent, including early warnings systems for fishermen in western Africa and in the Congo river basin, he said. The agency had been long planned, but its opening comes right after the Trump administration’s dismantling of the US Agency for International Development, which was a significant funder of many different kinds of programs in Africa. When the administration canceled 80% of USAID’s projects, among them was SERVIR, a joint initiative of USAID, National Aeronautics and Space Administration and space organizations in developing countries to help manage climate change, food security and natural disasters. “We need to ensure that African satellites can improve measurements and fill data gaps,” Kinyua said. “These gaps will always be there, and we need to fill some of them ourselves, and engage with other agencies.” How much does it cost to launch a satellite? Read more on the funding challenges the new agency faces on Bloomberg.com. Japan’s weather mysteries | By Mary Hui and Aaron Clark Meteorologists and climate detectives are ramping up their focus on a relatively young but increasingly active field of science: finding human fingerprints in extreme weather events. Scientists in Japan launched a new effort Tuesday dedicated to figuring out how much human-induced global warming can be blamed for individual weather disasters that impact the world’s fourth-largest economy. The initiative comes after 2024 was confirmed as the hottest year on record, and on the heels of both Japan’s biggest wildfire in half a century in March and record-breaking snowfall a month earlier.  The mountain surface damaged by forest fires in Ofunato, Iwate Prefecture, on March 6. Photographer: Takuya Matsumoto/Yomiuri Shimbun The Weather Attribution Center Japan, or WAC, will aim to pinpoint within days the degree to which events such as a heat wave, typhoon, or extreme rainfall were made more likely, or more intense, as a result of global warming. Already, the group established that record temperatures in Japan in July last year would’ve been almost impossible without the effects of a heating planet. “It is critical to provide the information as quick as possible,” because it’s typically in the days following an extreme weather event that people are most interested in its cause and the role of climate change, said Masahiro Watanabe, a professor at the University of Tokyo’s Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute and one of the founders of the center. “The interest of the public decays very rapidly after the event happens.” London-based World Weather Attribution, the best known group working in attributing extreme events to climate change, has produced or collaborated on over 100 rapid studies since it started 2014. Japan’s WAC, which has received initial funding from Tokyo-listed leasing and financial services firm Fuyo General Lease Co., aims to complement those long-standing efforts by focusing specifically on the country’s weather and utilizing its own region-specific expertise. “Japan is a collection of small islands and the mechanism of extreme events in Japan are quite different,” said Yukiko Imada, a professor at the University of Tokyo and another co-founder of WAC. “That is a major reason why Japan needs unique event attribution systems specific to the Japanese climate.” The center also aims to eventually expand its attribution work to analyze the economic impacts of extreme weather events. Read more on Japan’s weather attribution center on Bloomberg.com. Also, check out Bloomberg Green’s previous reporting on China’s quest to become a “weather superpower,” as the world’s second-largest economy aims to have a bigger say in global meteorological governance. | 
