Analysis and Possibility for Control of Atmospheric Boundary Layer Processes to Facilitate Adaptation to Environmental Changes

Convective rainfalls are of enormous importance for agriculture and water resource management in semi-arid areas such as Central-North-Eastern South Africa, where more than 50% of the country population is concentrated. This project will contribute into t he redress and capacity development of the South African Universities in the area of micro-meteorology and adaptation to changing environment such as climate change or urbanization. This redress will be achieved through promotion of micro-meteorological e ducation and research on the basis of the most recent advances in the theoretical understanding (non-local and roughness turbulence theories) and numerical modelling (large-eddy and non-hydrostatic simulations). The main beneficiaries will be historically disadvantaged and indigenes The project will give to their representatives the necessarily knowledge, field equipment and inexpensive numerical tools to rational landscape planning to support sustainable agricultural and air quality management. Impossibl e without extensive collaboration, the project will link established international consortiums driving all necessarily research components and lead them to attack the convection and rainfall problem successfully. An absolutely novel, and thus risky, eleme nt of the project, is a study of possibility to control the micro-meteorological processes through rational landscape management. In the case of success, it may bring major benefits to humanity, in the third world where other means to improve environmenta l conditions could be too costly.