Dawn Mahlobo is a Geography lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in the School of Education. She has worked for the South African Weather Service for more than 10 years as a scientist in numerical weather modelling. Atmospheric Modelling has been the backbone in her career as a scientist. She has been part of the Numerical Weather Prediction team at the South African Weather Service and the models she has worked with include ETA, MM5, Unified Model (UM). Her MSc Project was mainly on the UM’s model configurations, i.e. getting the best configuration to simulate short term weather in South Africa. Her PhD Work was based on transferring climate data especially the Hadley Cell to solar energy generation. She have looked at how the Hadley Cell, cloud cover, solar radiation etc will evolve under different climate change mitigation scenarios using Granger Causality as a tool. Furthermore, she has used the LEAP model (Long Range Energy Alternatives Planning System) as well as the WEAP (Water Evaluation and Planning System) to explore implications and solution to the Water-Energy nexus. Both these models are helpful in looking at different energy portfolios that could evolve under different climate change scenarios and could assist in South Africa’s energy planning in the context of a changing climate, including adaptation and mitigation trade-offs.
