A drive by Nasa to stream climate data to West African nations using its Earth-observing satellites could boost crop production in a region hit hard by climate change. Nasa has launched a hub in Niger's capital, Niamey, that would use space-based observations to improve food security and better manage natural disasters, said Dan Irwin, manager of the SERVIR project.The project, which will cover Burkina Faso, Ghana, Senegal and Niger, is one of four regional hubs worldwide funded by Nasa and the US Agency for International Development."The model is demand driven," said Irwin. Nasa did a study in the region two years ago and found that governments either did not have good data, or were not using it.The Sahel is vulnerable to climate change; rising temperatures and erratic rainfall are disrupting food production and fuelling hunger and malnutrition. Farmers in Senegal say traditional methods of predicting the weather are no longer reliable. A programme launched last month by the country's aviation and meteorology agency aims to solve the problem by sending texts to farmers.There was a need to connect science and technology to development solutions, said Alex Deprez of USAID. ..