Research
Climate change in Africa
Changes in extreme weather under global warming
Many of the impacts of climate change will materialize through
changes in extreme events such as droughts, floods, and storms. Such
extremes result in severe human suffering, and hamper economic
development and poverty reduction. Unfortunately, assessments of climate
change are often limited to mean temperature and precipitation. Knowledge
of changes in extremes is sparse, particularly for Africa. This web site
presents results of such analyses for various parts of Africa, using
the best climate
models from the set which formed input into the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4).
In some regions, different models project different trends in wet
and dry extremes. In other regions however, models show clear trends
such as increasing drought in the Kalahari and increasing floods in East
Africa. Notably, in some regions, such as Somalia and eastern Ethiopia, our
results show an increasing intensity of both floods and droughts.
The regional information can be accessed by the menu on the right hand site.
Percentage change in annual mean precipitation around 2050 compared with 1971-2000 in selected climate models. Top:
MPI/ECHAM5 (left: mean of 16
Essence, right: 3 4AR runs); middle:
GFDL (CM2.0 and CM2.1), bottom:
CCCMA CGCM3.1 and
HadGEM1 (
PDF)
Authors: Mxolisi Shongwe (Royal Netherlands Meteorlogical Institute KNMI, on leave from Swaziland Meteorological Service), Geert Jan van Oldenborgh, Bas de Boer, Bart van den Hurk (KNMI), Maarten van Aalst (Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Centre).
This research was partly funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Development Cooperation.
