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

Osgood, Daniel E.; Blakeley, S. Lucille; Ouni, Souha; Enenkel, Markus; Braun, Melody; Lebel, Thierry; Giannini, Alessandra

Weather-based index insurance is a financial instrument that 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.

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Title
Frontiers in Climate
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fclim.2024.1281623

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