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It is widely accepted that the trend in rising global temperatures during the twentieth-century can be attributed to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, stated with 90% certainty by the most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC 2007). Even with immediate and complete mitigation of emissions, an unlikely eventuality under the current political consensus, global impacts...
In this chapter we will discuss the large scale atmospheric and oceanic features associated with the long (Kiremt) and the short (Belg) rainy seasons. Considering the spatial variability of rainfall, the analysis was carried out for each homogeneous rainfall zones separately. Composite analyses on selected variables (wind, humidity, geopotential heights and sea surface temperature (SST)) from ERA-40...
In this chapter we present an analysis of the simulated rainfall over Ethiopia in climate simulations from the current generation HadAM3 climate model and from the new high-resolution HiGAM climate model. Comparisons are made with observations of rainfall from Ethiopian rain gauge data, merged gauge-satellite datasets and the ECMWF reanalysis datasets (ERA-40 and ERA-Interim). An intercomparison between...
It is generally agreed that changing climate variability, and the associated change in climate extremes, may have a greater impact on environmentally vulnerable regions than a changing mean. This research investigates rainfall variability, rainfall extremes and their associations with atmospheric and oceanic circulations over southern Africa, a region that is considered particularly vulnerable to...
Large-scale drivers of rainfall variability over Central Africa (approximately 12°S–7°N and 15°–32°E, roughly comprising the Democratic Republic of Congo basin) are examined using rain gauge data and the NCAR-NCEP reanalysis. Research into Central Africa has been neglected comparatively to other regions of Africa primarily because of a lack of suitable data. This study focuses on how local sea surface...
There is a growing consensus that anthropogenic climate change is a real phenomenon. There is strong evidence that changes to the hydrological cycle have occurred and will continue to do so in the future. Given our dependence on water resources and ecosystem services associated with the river system, this means it is important that appropriate adaptation strategies are developed. Such policies require...
We describe the nature of recent (50 year) rainfall variability in the summer rainfall zone, South Africa, and how variability is recognised and responded to on the ground by farmers. Using daily rainfall data and self organising mapping (SOM) we identify 12 internally homogeneous rainfall regions displaying differing parameters of precipitation change. Three regions, characterised by changing onset...
Past estimates of the numbers of migrants caused to relocate as a result of climate change have ranged from millions to billions worldwide. Attempts to quantify the numbers of people affected have commonly been based around calculating the numbers of ‘environmental refugees’ by projecting physical climate changes, such as sea-level rise or rainfall decline, on an exposed population. These studies...
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