Yusuff M. Sarnoh
I am an African American, originally from Liberia, West African.
I obtained my BSc Honours degree in Geography and Planning Science (Physical Geography) with Second Class Upper Division, University of Ado-Ekiti, Nigeria; MSc in Geography and Regional Planning (Population Studies), University of Benin, Nigeria and an MSc in Climate Change, University of East Anglia, Norwich, United Kingdom.
After my first degree, I was offered a fellowship by the United Nations University, Tokyo, Japan to attend the United Nations University International Courses (UNU/IC) and obtained a professional Certificate in Environment and Sustainable Development.
Before migrating to the United States, I worked as a lecturer at Liberia’s state-owned university, the University of Liberia (Department of Geography), and the Cuttington University Graduate School of Professional Studies respectively. I also worked as a Dissemination, documentation and Monitoring and Evaluation officer at the Government of Liberia Institute of Statistics and Geo-Information Service (Statistics House). In addition to the above, I served as a consultant for PARIS21 (a satellite World Bank Institution), responsible for training staff in statistics houses in Africa how to document and archive surveys and censuses data for dissemination.
I started my PhD programme at the University of Glasgow in February 2020 and have interest in assessing the changes in intensity and frequency of drought within the West African Monsoon region as a result of rising global temperatures. The research wishes to identify the influence of individual climate factors, such as, average temperature, average precipitation, and rainfall variability on drought occurrence in West Africa. I hope to liaise with climate modelers to evaluate the variability in the projected drought pattern under different climate models and assess the implications on the drought index, which incorporates not only rainfall, but soil moisture.
