Encuentro internacional ‘WA-CLIM'

23-01-2026

Three researchers from the Physical Oceanography group at the University of Malaga participated in the international WA-CLIM meeting, recently held in Dakar, Senegal. The aim of this top-level scientific event was to advance our understanding of the physical mechanisms that explain the influence of climate in this African region and its impact on the marine ecosystem.

They are José Carlos Sánchez, from the Department of Applied Physics II, and Jorge López Parages and Irene Nadal Arizo, from Applied Physics I, although the UMA has also collaborated in this workshop as an organizer, together with the Cheikh Anta Diop and Mamadou Mattar Mbow universities of Dakar, the Complutense University of Madrid, the CSIC, the AECID, and the Spanish embassy in Senegal.

Specifically, of the six sessions in which the meeting was structured, the University of Malaga was the protagonist of the one related to 'Impacts of climate on fisheries'.

"The results presented demonstrate how the impact of different climatic phenomena on key species in the region is clear. And what is more interesting, these 'cause-and-effect' relationships can contribute to developing future tools for predicting stock abundance," explains researcher Jorge López Parages.

The expert also highlights that it seems clear how ocean warming associated with climate change is producing a slow but steady shift in certain species. "In particular, the round sardinella (Sardinella aurita)—a species of fundamental socio-economic importance in the countries of northwestern Africa—appears to be gradually moving northward, reducing its abundance in Senegal and increasing it off the coast of Morocco. The number of European sardinella is even increasing in the Mediterranean, which, far from being beneficial for us, could be detrimental since it seems to be displacing the European sardine," he notes.

In addition to its scientific aims, ''WA-CLIM'' also works at the level of cooperation. "What we are looking for is to study, based on the results we obtain, how these influence the migration of people from sub-Saharan Africa to Europe," concludes researcher Jorge López Parages, who adds that the idea is for this meeting to continue and be held biennially.

This scientist from the University of Malaga (UMA), on the other hand, is one of the authors of the book 'The Sahel: scenario of the climate and migration crisis', published by Casa África; a work that comes from the interdisciplinary and inter-university network MASCARAS, of which the UMA is a part, whose objective is to understand the influence of climate on migrations.