Abstract
The need for skilful weather forecasting as a strategy for adapting food production to a variable and changing climate is recognized. Frequent assessment of the existing tools provides the needed feedback to encourage the growth of a more reliable weather forecasting capacity. A scheme designed for the assessment of the skill demonstrated by published weather forecasts is presented. The existing products of four weather forecasting organizations with interests in West Africa are assessed using the observed weather during the period from 1996 to 2000. The weather forecasting organizations concerned are NOAA (USA), Met Office (UK), CNRS (France) and the Nigerian Central Forecasting Office. The forecast skills of the various organizations appear not to have witnessed any significant improvement between 1996 and 2000. Overall, the low proportion of the forecasts falling into the ‘low skill’ category is encouraging. However, the relatively high percentage of the ‘moderate skill’ and low percentage of the ‘high skill’ categories suggest that there is considerable room for improvement. One may have to give the various organizations more time to perfect the existing tools. However, this review has not come too early, because it is the type of feedback needed to hasten the emergence of more skilful forecasts. It has been established in this study that better rainfall forecasts could be achieved with higher resolution sea‐surface temperature anomaly data and the inclusion of more predictor variables, especially those of a synoptic nature. Copyright © 2004 Royal Meteorological Society.