Changes in temperature and precipitation extremes over the Greater Horn of Africa region from 1961 to 2010

Abstract

Recent special reports on climate extremes have shown evidences of changes in the patterns of climate extremes at global, regional and local scales. Understanding the characteristics of climate extremes at regional and local levels is critical not only for the development of preparedness and early warning systems, but is also fundamental in the development of any adaptation strategies. There is still very limited knowledge regarding the past, present and future patterns of climate extremes in the Greater Horn of Africa (GHA). This study, which was supported by the World Bank Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (WB-GFDRR) and implemented by the World Meteorological Organization, was organized in terms of three workshops with three main objectives; (1) analysis of daily rainfall and temperature extremes for ten countries in the GHA region using observed in situ data running from 1971 to 2006, (2) assessing whether the United Kingdom Met-office and Hadley centre Providing REgional Climates for Impact Studies (UK-PRECIS) modelling system can provide realistic representation of the past and present climate extremes as observed by available in situ data, and (3) studying the future regional climate extremes under different scenarios to further assess the expected changes in climate extremes. This paper, therefore, uses the outputs of these workshops and also includes post-workshop analyses to assess the changes of climate extremes within the GHA. The results showed a significant decrease in total precipitation in wet days greater than 1 mm and increasing warm extremes, particularly at night, while cold extremes are decreasing. Considering a combination of geophysical models and satellite gravimetry observations from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission in the frame of GRACE daily Kalman-smoothing models, for the years 2002 to 2010, we explored a decline in total water storage variations over the GHA.

Trends of Extreme Temperature and Rainfall Indices for Arid and Semi-Arid Lands of South Eastern Kenya

“…The diurnal temperature ranges on the other hand depict decreasing trends. The results of this study are in a general agreement with those obtained by earlier researchers [9] and [10] who used data for one station in the area. However, for this area of study, it is noted that the magnitudes of change of the indices are location specific and therefore the information is more reliable for application in planning and decision making for the specific locations analysed.…”

“…The information on these trends is critical in decision making with regard to agricultural planning and practice. Attempts have been made by some researchers to derive these indices [9] and [10] for the country. However, these studies have relied on data of only one station from this area of study.…”

Magnitudes of Climate Variability and Changes over the Arid and Semi-Arid Lands of Kenya between 1961 and 2013 Period

“…The MarchApril-May season had the highest but statistically insignificant decline in seasonal rainfall amounts. The University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit gridded observational datasets were well correlated to the observed rainfall data in regions without rainfall stations, which agrees with the work by Endris et al (2013) and Omondi (2014).…”

Predicting East African spring droughts using Pacific and Indian Ocean sea surface temperature indices

“…Long-rain declines have been confirmed by many recent studies Liebmann et al, 2014;Lyon and DeWitt, 2012;Viste et al, 2012), and corroborated by analyses of normalized difference vegetation index imagery (Pricope et al, 2013) and satellite-observed soil moisture (Omondi et al, 2013 Nicholson (2014b). The source of the SST forcing behind these recent East African rainfall declines, however, continues to be a matter of considerable debate.…”