The Vice-Chancellor of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, through the Public Lectures Committee invites the Academic Community and the general public to a Professorial Inaugural Lecture scheduled as follows:

Abstract of the Lecture

Topic: Cracking the Climate Change Code: The Sub-Saharan Africa Revolution

Climate change began from the inception of the thought; the processes that underline the human ability to explore its environment in search of comfort. Humans have therefore adopted different ways to modify the Earth’s resources and environment to survive and enhance the quality of life. Through technology and socioeconomic activities, coupled with quasi-exponential growth in the world population within a few human generations, humankind has become the primary personality and the force inducing climate change. Climate change has dire consequences on energy, land, ocean, coastal and freshwater ecosystems; urban and rural infrastructure; industry and society. In Ghana, human activities such as deforestation, mining, and emission from transportation, energy, agriculture and waste management are expected to catalyze extreme climate events.

The lecture would tell my journey to advance Meteorology and Climate Science Education and Research (MCS-ER) in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The journey commenced from my undergraduate and Master studies in the Physics Programme at the University of Cape Coast (UCC), which deepened my curiosity to explore the complex interplay between natural, social and climate systems and human-induced climate change. The human-induced climate change has caused widespread adverse impacts on the environment and health.

The lecture will discuss some adventures on the deep waters of the North Sea, a predoctoral field activity towards my climate science education. After that, mention is made of my doctoral and postdoctoral research activities, which include retrieval studies of ozone, nitrogen dioxide and nitrate radicals in the physics and chemistry of stratospheric ozone. I would explain satellite observations modes and address the ozone hole concept and its importance in climate science. Research institutions, conferences and collaborations that have advanced my knowledge in Meteorology and Climate Science in Germany will be emphasized.

Additionally, the lecture will discuss my research activities at the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST). I will highlight my motivation for setting up meteorological field stations over the Ashanti region and other parts of the country. Furthermore, my involvement in research project activities, my key contributions, lessons learned, and the use of relevant tools developed to support professional development training and capacity building in KNUST and other related institutions will be elaborated.

To begin with, the “Quantifying Weather and Climate Impacts on Health in Developing Countries (QWeCI)” project was targeted at producing vector-borne disease models driven by climate variability and climate change trends from climate models and observations. The project ultimately led to early warning predictive tools designed for the needs of end-user health professionals and decision-makers. These predictions were designed for important diseases affecting human populations and livestock in Africa, especially malaria and Rift Valley fever. The lecture will highlight my contributions to the development of VECTRI, a malaria disease model. The project had 13 partner institutions from West and East Africa and Europe, and trained about fifteen (15) PhDs. Besides, the lecture will discuss my research team’s contributions to the seasonal forecast, which is vital for planning agricultural activities. Also, in the address will be the development of a countrywide rainfall climatological database, which addressed the concern of data reconstruction and data network enhancement, and served as a basis for advanced validation studies.

The “Dynamics-Aerosol-Chemistry-Cloud Interactions in West Africa (DACCIWA)” project also aimed at carrying out a comprehensive surface and upper air observational data collection over Southern West Africa. The lecture will highlight my contributions and impacts in the 2016 upper air measurement field campaign in Ghana. Moreover, the lecture will also present findings from the GCRF African SWIFT (Global Challenges Research Fund Africa Science for Weather Information and Forecasting Techniques) project. The goal of the GCRF African SWIFT project was to address the challenges of African weather forecasting from hourly to seasonal timescales and advance the joint research capacities of operational National Meteorological and Hydrological Services (NMHSs) and Higher Education/Research Institutes (HEIs) for forecasting improvements in Africa. The project provided a deep understanding of the physics of tropical weather systems, climate data evaluation and contribution to complex weather numerical model and satellite data quality checks for improved weather forecasts. The lecture will finally touch on co-production and testbeds as part of the SWIFT project and the policy direction for improving weather information and service in the country. The lecture will conclude by sharing information on some ongoing projects and their contributions to cracking the climate change code through MCS-ER.

Profile of Professor Leonard K. Amekudzi

Dr. rer. nat. (Bremen), MPhil, BSC (Hons), Dip.ED (Cape Coast), MinstP

(Provost of the College of Science, KNUST)

Background

Leonard Kofitse Amekudzi is a Professor of Atmospheric and Climate Science in the Department of Meteorology and Climate Science, Faculty of Physical and Computational Sciences and Provost of the College of Science, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi.  As an Atmospheric and Climate Scientist, Professor Leonard Amekudzi has over twenty (20) years experience in teaching, research, community service and mentorship.

Professor Amekudzi hails from Tegbi, in the Keta Municipality of the Volta Region. His parents are Mr. Trot Wisdom Amekudzi and Madam Juliana Kokui Amevor-Dumashie, all of blessed memory. He is the seventh born of ten children and the fourth son of his parents. He started his basic school at the Ho-Bankoe Roman Catholic Boys Primary School and continued his middle school at Ho-Kpodzi Evangelical Presbyterian (E.P.) Middle II School. He had his Secondary O’Level at Awudome Secondary School, Tsito, Volta Region and A’Level at St. Thomas Aquinas Secondary School, Cantonments, Accra. After sixth form, Professor Amekudzi had his national service at the Awudome Senior High School, where he served as a Physics and General Science teacher. Additionally, as a former member of the school’s football team, he served as assistant coach to the school football team. He obtained his Bachelor of Science in Physics with a Diploma in Education and Master of Philosophy in Theoretical Physics from the University of Cape Coast (UCC), Ghana, in 1997 and 2001, respectively, and PhD from the University of Bremen, Germany in 2005.

Early Career Experience

Professor Amekudzi did his teaching internship at Keta Secondary Technical School between 1995 – 1997. He served as a Teaching Assistant in the 1997/98 academic year at the Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, UCC and at the same time served as a part-time Mathematics Teacher at St. Augustine’s College, Cape Coast. He was then employed by Ghana Education Service (GES) as a Physics Teacher at Mfantsipim School, and also served as the Brilliant/National Science and Maths Quiz trainer and was part of the team that won the 1999 competition for the school.

Prof. Amekudzi, in 1998 participated in the eight-week Laboratory and Instrumentation training of Science Teachers organised by GES at PRESEC, Legon. Following his training, he served as the Science Resources person in charge of the Physics laboratory. He was awarded the best Early Career Science Teacher during the “School’s Speech and Prize Giving Day” in 1999 for his exceptional teaching skills and dedication to work.

In September 2001, Professor Amekudzi left Ghana to Germany for further studies. After completing a one-year Master Science course work at the Institute of Environmental Physics (IUP), Faculty of Physics and Electrical Engineering, University of Bremen, Germany, he was awarded the ENVISAT (Environmental Satellite) Doctoral Fellowship by the European Space Agency (ESA). He obtained his Doctor of Natural Science Degree (Dr. rer. nat) in Atmospheric Physics, Satellite Remote Sensing and Climate Science with "Magna Cum Laude" from the University of Bremen, Germany in 2005. Professor Amekudzi accepted an offer and worked with the Atmospheric Physics and Chemistry research group in IUP at the University of Bremen as a Postdoctoral Research Scientist. He was involved in retrieving atmospheric trace gases information from Occultation and Limb observations under the “ENVISAT’s SCIAMACHY Limb and Occultation Validation (SCILOV)” project. Notable among his research in Germany is the first retrieval of Nitrate radical (NO₃), NO₂ and O₃ from space-borne Lunar Occultation measurement.

He also represented his institute in the internationally validation of space-borne NO₂ and NO from Atmospheric Physics and Chemistry experiments- published in the Journal of Physics and Chemistry of the Atmosphere. He also presented his research findings at several international conferences, including AGU, EGU, COSPAR, GPD and other ESA conferences, and published his work in reputable journals in the field of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.

Academic and Administrative Experience

Professor Amekudzi was appointed a Lecturer for the Meteorology and Climate Science Programme in the Department of Physics in May, 2008. He was promoted to Senior Lecturer on 1st October 2009, Associate Professor in August 2015, and Professor in August 2020. His specialization areas include Atmospheric Physics and Chemistry, Ocean and Atmospheric Dynamics, Satellite Remote Sensing and Climatology.

He served as the Coordinator for the Meteorology and Climate Science Programme, held the position of Head of the Physics Department, and currently the Provost of the College of Science. He is a Fellow of the Independence Hall, KNUST. Professor Amekudzi is a member of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), European Geophysical Union, Institute of Physics (IOP), UK, the Committee on Advances in Space Research (COSPAR) and the Ghana Science Association (GSA). He was the chairperson for the 8th KNUST Summer School and the Chairman of the Second Ewiem Nimdie Summer School and the SWIFT Summer School on Tropical Meteorology in 2010 and 2019, respectively. He has also chaired several local and national GSA conferences.

Professor Amekudzi was the Chairman of the College of Science Laboratory Committee and the Chairman of the University Audio Visual Committee. He is a member of the Specialized Committee of the Ghana National Commission for UNESCO and was a member of the University Industrial Tracer and Feedback Committee. He was a Technical Working Group (TWG) member of the National Climate Change Early Warning Group, and a member of the Policy on Teaching and Learning Committee.

Professor Amekudzi has over fifteen (15) years of experience in teaching at KNUST and has lectured several undergraduate and postgraduate courses in Physics, and Meteorology and Climate Science. The courses he has taught in Physics include Properties of Matter, Statistical Mechanics, Topics in Classical and Quantum Mechanics, Theory of Fields and Topics in Advanced Quantum Mechanics. The courses in Meteorology and Climate Science he taught include Programming with FORTRAN, Atmospheric and Ocean Dynamics, Atmospheric Physics, Tropical Climatology, Biometeorology and Human Health, Prediction of Tropical Weather Systems, and Advanced Atmospheric Dynamics.

Professor Amekudzi was also a service lecturer for the Applied Meteorology course in the Aerospace Engineering programme at the Department of Mechanical Engineering, KNUST. To date, he lectures both undergraduate and postgraduate students in courses including Satellite and Radar Meteorology, Aeromony of Upper Atmosphere, Climate of Sub-Saharan Africa, Advanced Ocean and Atmospheric waves in the new Meteorology and Climate Science Department.

Professor Amekudzi has supervised over sixty (60) undergraduate research projects, fifteen (15) Masters’ theses and sixteen (16) PhD theses. He mentors senior members at the Meteorology and Climate Science Department and other Departments at KNUST. He has been a member of the Local Advisory Board of the WASCAL Climate Change and Land Use (CCLU) graduate programme in the Department of Civil Engineering, KNUST. He is a lead supervisor for eight (8) ongoing PhD students at KNUST.

Research Collaborations, Grants and Publications

Prof. Amekudzi's key research areas include Atmospheric Physics, Tropical and Satellite Meteorology, Climatology and Data Science. He was a Regular Research Fellow at the Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics (ICTP), Italy, between 2011 and 2016. Professor Amekudzi has over 90 peer-reviewed publications in highly reputable journals and over 120 conference papers. He has contributed to ten (10) policy briefs, six (6) book chapters, three (3) books and thirty (30) technical reports. His publication covers Meteorology (Nowcasting, Synoptic and Seasonal forecasting), Climate Science and its impacts such as health, agriculture, Energy, land use/cover, and water resources. Professor Amekudzi is highly visible on the international bibliometric database such as ResearchGate, Google Scholar, and Scopus, among others. He has an H-index of 25 and an i10-index of 53 and 2100 citations on Google Scholar. He has 1,353 people interested in his research, with over 40,000 reads in ResearchGate. According to the AD scientific index 2023, Professor Amekudzi is the first-ranked Atmospheric Physics and climate scientist, and the 12th-ranked Natural Scientist in the country.

Prof. Amekudzi has worked extensively with different research projects globally. He has been a Principal Investigator (PI) or Co-PI for many projects with total grant amount of over Twenty  Million Dollars ($20,000,000.00). He has been an investigator on the following research-collaborated projects - Quantifying Weather and Climate Impacts on Health in Developing Countries (QWeCI), Building Stronger Universities (BSU), West Africa Science Service Centre for Climate Change and Adapted Land Use (WASCAL), Dynamic-Aerosol-Chemistry-Cloud interactions in West Africa (DACCIWA) and International Development Research Centre-Climate Change Adaptation Research and Training Capacity for Development (IDRC-CCARTCD), Global Challenge Research Fund Africa Science for Weather Information and Forecasting Techniques (GCRF African SWIFT), the Current and Future Risks of Urban and Rural Flooding in West Africa- An Integrated Analysis and Ecosystem-Based Solutions (FURILOOD), and Green House Gas Emissions and Mitigation Options under Climate and Land-use Change in West Africa a Concerted Regional Modelling and assessment (CONCERT).

Professor Amekudzi has also served as an external examiner for the postgraduate programme at the Institute of Environment and Sanitation, UG, Ghana. He was an external examiner and Moderator for the Department of Applied Physics at UDS. He is a visiting professor at the Africa Centre of Excellence in Coastal Resilience (ACECoR), UCC and was part of the Oceanography and Limnology syllabus development for ACECoR. He thus gives the Physical Dynamics of Ocean lectures at ACECoR. He also serves as an international advisory board member and visiting professor for the WASCAL PhD programme at the University of Abomey-Calavi, Benin, where he teaches Applied Meteorology. He is also an international advisory board member at the Federal University of Technology, Minna (FUT-Minna), Nigeria, and lectures Micrometeorology.  Professor Amekudzi was part of the three-person committee that developed the Master of Climate Informatics Programme ran at the University of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. He is also an external examiner for the WASCAL Meteorology ad Climate Science programme at the Federal University of Technology, Akure (FUTA), Nigeria. Prof Amekudzi has been an external examiner and co-supervisor for the Climate and Environmental Science PhD programme at the Department of Environmental Science, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia and the University of South Africa, Tshwane, South Africa, since 2017. 

Professor Amekudzi has availed his mentoring to national and international early career researchers. He has hosted a young researcher from the Nigeria Meteorological Agency (NiMET) on the SWIFT academic industrial exchange programme. He hosted and mentored another post-doctoral fellow from Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Nigeria, on the Climate Impact Research Capacity and Leadership Enhancement in Sub-Saharan Africa (CIRCLE) Programme. He also mentored a DAAD-funded post-doctoral fellow from the University of Yaounde, Cameroon and an AIMS-funded post-doctoral fellow from the University of Abomey-Calavi, Benin. He has also hosted two European PhD students working in Tropical Meteorology from the University of Reading, UK and the University of Cantabria, Spain. Also, he was external examiner for Atmospheric Science PhD  theses from the Institute of Environmental Physics, Grenoble, France and University of Cantabria, Spain.

Community Service and Other Engagements

Professor Amekudzi is a lead consultant for five different Climate and Environmental projects in Ghana. These include the UNDP project on Ghana Climate projection for Health Sector Response, the GIZ Project on Development and Implementation of Capacity Building Measures for Staff of NADMO on Climate Disaster Risk Management, USAID/UCC climate change and adaptation workshops in Cape Coast and Climate Change Consultant for Regional Institute of Population Studies (RIPS).

Professor Amekudzi was a resource person, speaker and facilitator for several climate change workshops in Ghana and other parts of Africa including the CCARTCD Climate Change Modelling Short Course at the University of Ghana (2013), and the PhD course in Climate Change Processes, Mitigation and Adaptation, BSU I Common Course, KNUST- Kumasi. He was the Plenary Speaker at the Continental Conference on the theme “Enabling Informed Decision and Policy Making for Adaptation to Climate Change in Africa: Providing Evidence and Fostering Research Policy Linkages to Support Adaptation to Climate Change in Africa” in Nairobi, Kenya (2015). He was a Keynote Speaker at the “Symposium on Environment and Health, Climate Change in the Context of UV Radiation”, in South Africa, (2015), a workshop organised and hosted by the South Africa Academy of Arts and Science.

He was involved in the science curriculum development for primary schools in Ghana. He served as the lead reviewer for the Ghana Tertiary Education Commission (GTEC), overseeing the evaluation of Meteorology and Climate-related programmes throughout the country. He has been a reviewer for Royal Meteorology Society Journals, EGU, AGU, MDPI SAGE and others. Professor Amekudzi was one of the reviewers of the World Meteorology Forecasters handbook for West Africa. He is a Governing Board Member of the TCC-UNESCO Category II Center of Excellence. He is also a Governing Board Member of Awudome Senior High School (AWUSCO) and holds the position of National President of the Old Students Union of Awudome Secondary School (OSUA).

Professor Amekudzi has generously established two bursaries dedicated to supporting postgraduate training in the field of Meteorology and Climate Science, and other related disciplines.

He is actively engaged in poultry farming and is currently the CEO of Trotmemo Farms Ltd, and was recognised as the Best Poultry Farmer at the Ho Municipal in 2014.

Family

Professor Leonard Amekudzi is married to Mrs. Comfort Elikplim Amekudzi, who currently serves as the Bursar of Independence Hall, KNUST. The couple are blessed with three children, all boys. Their names are Dzidzornu Godfred, a third-year Civil Engineering student, Delali Jeffery, a final-year senior high school student, and Etumte Cyril, a second-year senior high school student. Professor Amekudzi is also a guardian to numerous nephews and nieces. He enjoys watching football, playing table tennis, and listening to gospel music. He is a practising Christian and fellowships at the Living Waters Assemblies of God Church, Kumasi.