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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Clim.
Sec. Climate Services
Volume 6 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fclim.2024.1281623
This article is part of the Research Topic Drought Early Warning Information Systems: Towards a New Generation of Risk-Informed Decision-Support View all 6 articles

Climate Variability through the lens of applied weather index insurance in Senegal-A novel perspective on the implications of decadal variation

Provisionally accepted
Daniel Osgood Daniel Osgood 1*S. Lucille Blakeley S. Lucille Blakeley 1*Souha Ouni Souha Ouni 2*Markus Enenkel Markus Enenkel 3Melody Braun Melody Braun 1Thierry Lebel Thierry Lebel 4*Alessandra Giannini Alessandra Giannini 1,5*
  • 1 International Research Institute for Climate and Society, Columbia Climate School, Columbia University, Palisades, New York, United States
  • 2 Willis Towers Watson, New York, New York, United States
  • 3 Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI), Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
  • 4 Université Grenoble Alpes, Saint Martin d'Hères, Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes, France
  • 5 Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique, Sorbonne Université (CNRS), Paris, ÃŽle-de-France, France

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Weather-based index insurance is a financial instrument which allows smallholder farmers to protect themselves against climate shocks such as droughts and floods. In many cases, insurance indices are based on one or more earth observation datasets (e.g., rainfall, soil moisture, vegetative health) which are partly covering periods of more than 40 years. While remote sensing products and their associated data have improved over this time, understanding the historical climate variability and trends remains an essential piece in ensuring the development of indexes that best represent farmers' risks. From a practical perspective, shortening time series to limit the risk of understudied climate variability, such as the Atlantic Multidecadal Variability, sometimes seems to be a quick solution. However, shorter time series jeopardize the overall robustness of the index. Therefore, understanding the links between climate variability, index design, and implications for farmers is key. Weather-based index insurance products in Sahelian West Africa usually face a challenge in robustly quantify underlying climatic decadal variation in seasonal rainfall. This study analyzes the influence of decadal shifts in rainfall patterns in Sahelian West Africa, in particular Senegal, on index insurance calibration and design, concluding with practical recommendations for the next generation of drought risk finance instruments in the region. Our findings indicate that decadal variability has not led to a clear decrease in payouts in recent years compared to earlier years, despite an overall increase in seasonal rainfall. Rather, we find that interannual variability has increased which may be a more critical factor for assessing farmers' agricultural risk than the increase in total rainfall.

    Keywords: climate variability, West Africa, drought, index insurance, Smallholder farmers, remote sensing, disaster risk management

    Received: 22 Aug 2023; Accepted: 05 Sep 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Osgood, Blakeley, Ouni, Enenkel, Braun, Lebel and Giannini. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Daniel Osgood, International Research Institute for Climate and Society, Columbia Climate School, Columbia University, Palisades, 10964-1000, New York, United States
    S. Lucille Blakeley, International Research Institute for Climate and Society, Columbia Climate School, Columbia University, Palisades, 10964-1000, New York, United States
    Souha Ouni, Willis Towers Watson, New York, New York, United States
    Thierry Lebel, Université Grenoble Alpes, Saint Martin d'Hères, 38400, Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes, France
    Alessandra Giannini, International Research Institute for Climate and Society, Columbia Climate School, Columbia University, Palisades, 10964-1000, New York, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.