Degefu is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography & Environmental Studies in the College of Social Sciences and humanities,Debre Markos University Ethiopia. He completed his PhD at Addis Ababa University in 2014, and his research work was titled “Rainfall and streamflow in the Omo-Ghibe River Basin of Ethiopia: Trends, extreme events and teleconnections with some global climate drivers” which was funded by Livestock-Climate Change Collaborative Research Support Program (Colorado State University), Climate Science Research Partnership (CSRP) Met Office, UK) and African Climate Change Fellowship Program (ACCFP), University of Dar Salam, Tanzania.

Degefu’s research area and interest is hydroclimate variability and climate change adaptation issues. He has accomplished many research works including the international level research programme called Adaptation at Scale in Semi-arid Regions in collaboration with Addis Ababa University and University of East Angelia and Cape Town. He has presented his research outputs in many international conferences and workshops including AMMA and Adaptation Futures, and published more than 7 peer-reviewed articles in reputable journals. He also supervised more than 30 MA and one PhD student, and currently supporting more than 10 MA students.

Project-Multiple datasets and drought-indices for supporting the mitigation of and adaptation to drought in Ethiopia

The research project intends to identify and communicate geospatial datasets from big global data sources and drought indices that have better performance in characterizing the complex spatiotemporal drought development over Ethiopia. It also aims to identify the drivers of drought development by analyzing the couple drought variability and large-scale climate oscillation system, and evaluate data performance in simulating these teleconnections. He is hosted by Department of Geography & Environmental Studies, Addis Ababa University, Ethiopia.  For effective implementation of this research project, he is conducting a study in collaboration with local, regional (ICPAC) and global scale (University of California and Loughborough University, UK) research organization and practitioners. This study is anticipated to enhance drought hazard mitigation and adaptation efforts by working the proposed research interactively with key practitioners and policy makers and effectively translating the research results into practical actions.