Welcome to the 1^st Rain Cell Africa Workshop !

To be held from  March 30^th   to April 2^d, at the Palm Beach Hotel , in Ouagadougou, Burkin Faso

       The Raincell Burkina Faso Consortium (IRD, Univ. of Ouagadougou and WASCAL) invites scientists and stakeholders interested in Climate and Water Resources to join leading researchers in the field of precipitation estimation and applications for a workshop. The workshop will discuss current issues in measuring rainfall in West Africa and will introduce a new technique to quantify rainfall with commercial microwave links and discuss its potentials for West Africa. The two days workshop will be followed by a training school where young scientists will learn more details about the method and will get some practice on test data sets.

please check the preliminary   workshop_schedule

Note :  the Workshop originally scheduled in Nov 2014 had to be rescheduled in March 2015.

The first 2 days will be devoted to discussing general issues on Rainfall Measurement in Africa and the need for improved, spatialized rain fields for many applications :  meteorology and climate, hydrology, water ressources, agronomy  or  health impacts.

Worldwide applications of rainfall monitoring based on terrestrial or satellite microwave links will be presented by experts in the domain.  The first West African test bed, operating in Ouagadougou Burkina Faso since 2012 will be presented.

Open discussions will be organized for new projects/team to emerge in Africa and become part of the RainCellAfrica network.

The trainees will first attend the 2 days workshop in Palm Beach Hotel and will be  introduced to  the new technique of precipitation remote sensing using terrestrial or satellite microwave links in West Africa. Example of implementations of the method in different parts the world (Germany, The Netherlands, Switzerland, Israel and Burkina Faso) will be presented and the potential for a regional network will be discussed.

During 2 additional days, the trainees will learn more on the theoretical principles, potentials and limitations of the new technique, as well as solutions and practical examples that will be presented by leading scientists in this field.

The training school is open to young researchers from West Africa in climate research, meteorology, hydrology, environmental sciences, signal processing applications and precipitation remote sensing who intend to use commercial microwave links. Previous experience in the field of quantitative precipitation analysis is a plus. We expect from applicants a sound knowledge of programming languages, ideally Python or R, alternatively MATLAB or IDL.

Participation will be limited to a maximum of 20. Please send your application, including a motivation letter, a support letter from your lab/institution and a short CV, to:      raincell01@sciencesconf.org

 More details on the training school ca be found here :

Flyer_Rain_Cell_africa_Training_School

Contact /Enquiry : raincell01@sciencesconf.org

Organizing comittee

Boubacar Barry, WASCAL, Ouagadougou Burkina Faso

Frédéric Cazenave, LTHE, IRD Ouagadougou Burkina Faso

Marielle Gosset, GET, IRD, Toulouse, France

Harald Kunstmann, KIT, IMK-IFU, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany

François Zougmoré, Lame, Université de Ouagadougou Burkina Faso