THE

TEHNICAL UNIVERSITY
OF KENYA

B.ENG (CIVIL ENGINEERING)

TONY FRANK

EICQ/01891/2017

EARTH AND ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE -Take Away Cat

Q)DISCUSS THE IMPORTANCE OF WEATHER INFORMATION AND CLIMATE SERVICES TO CIVIL ENGINEERS
WITH A SPECIAL MENTION OF CLIMATE CHANGE

•Climate services provide scientifically based information and products that enhance the civil engineers'
knowledge and understanding about the impact of climate on their decisions and actions.

Climate services and weather information have been useful to civil engineers in the following ways:

•Past weather information and climate services e.g historical climate, help civil engineers to know the
historical climatic conditions of a place of their interest. Through this, they are able to know what to
expect in terms of weather and climate before practising.

•Present weather information and climate services e.g observations, climate summaries, reports and
provision of likelihood variations of climate variables relevant to planning are important to help civil
engineers to know some of the obvious threats to the infrastructure they are building i.e extreme
weather conditions including: heat waves, storms,strong winds and intense rainfall.

•When the Civil engineers are aware of the risks and threats to their structures ,they therefore plan the
constructions appropriately to counter the stresses that extreme weather conditions may exert on the
infrastructure.Weather and climate awareness helps them to plan in terms of what kind if materials to
use and whether it is safe to put up infrastructure in a particular place or not.

•Weather information services e.g weather forecasts also helps civil engineers to know on what days
the weather is favourable for working(i.e avoiding rainy ,snowy days).

•Weather information and climate services helps the civil engineers in problem-solving and giving
solutions to the already existing concerns.

•Climate change, seasonal changes over a long period with respect to the growing greenhouse gases in
the atmosphere, is rapidly taking place. Therefore,future climate information e.g projections on climate
conditions are very useful to civil engineers. Such information helps the structural engineers to mitigate
the dangers that arise with extreme weather and climate conditions i.e building structures that cannot
be swept by tsunamis, tornadoes, hurricanes or shaken by earthquakes.
•Future climate information also helps the civil engineers in adaptation e.g building infrastructure that
will conform to the weather patterns and climatic conditions expected in the near future in case of
drastic climate changes.

•Significant changes in global temperature, precipitation, wind patterns and other measures of climate
that occur over a long period (which is climate change generally) helps the civil engineers to be
innovative and inventive.They change their methods of practising with changes in climate.

REFERENCES

http:// library.duke. edu

http://en.m.wikipedia.org

www.wired.co.uk

www.dictionary. com