Droughts in East Africa: Causes, impacts and resilience

Haile, Gebremedhin Gebremeskel; Tang, Qiuhong; Sun, Siao; Huang, Zhongwei; Zhang, Xuejun; Liu, Xingcai

doi:10.1016/j.earscirev.2019.04.015

Cited by 244 publications

(123 citation statements)

References 130 publications

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“…The only common denominator is precipitation-de cit, which in itself may be of different magnitude per location. Overall, the seasonal rainfall benchmark of 500mm as stipulated by Haile et al (2019) for a rough drought indicator in a season helps to present an outlook of the drought. In 2015 the entire study area fell below the 500mm mark, while in 2017, only one tabia/kabele (village) did.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Yield and yield-reduction in recent drought years in southern Tigray, northern Ethiopia: Implications on food security

Eze

Okolo

Negash

2020

Preprint

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The consequences of prolonged precipitation-deficient periods are primarily substantial water deficit, with the spatial characteristics of a place being (semi)arid, and various socioeconomic factors worsening its impacts and deepening poverty among agrarian communities.This study utilizes a combination of climate, remote sensing and field survey data from farmers to obtain a first-hand information on the impacts of recent (2015 and 2017) droughts on crop yield in Raya Azebo and Endamehoni woredas in Ethiopia. Annual rainfall, kiremt rainfall, annual NDVI and Dev-NDVI, kiremt season Dev-NDVI, monthly Dev-NDVI (for June to October), and monthly SPI-1, SPI-3 and SPI-12 (for June to October) were considered as likely factors that could relate with yield and yield loss in the area. Correlation and multiple linear stepwise regression statistical techniques were used to determine drought-yield relationships, and identify more accurate predictors of yield and yield losses in each of the drought years.Results obtained show droughts as having spatiotemporal variations and impacts, with its primary and common reflection being reduced vegetation amount, translating to crop failures, food shortages and reduced income of smallholders.Spate irrigation should be further popularized in the low-lying areas of Raya Azebo to augment for future deficiencies in the kiremt rainfall.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Yield and yield-reduction in recent drought years in southern Tigray, northern Ethiopia: Implications on food security

Eze

Okolo

Negash

2020

Preprint

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“…Chen et al, 2013;Vicente-Serrano et al, 2013;Isbell et al, 2015;Q. Sun et al, 2016;Greenwood et al, 2017;Um et al, 2017). The newly generated SPEI at high spatial resolution based on CHIRPS and GLEAM (SPEI-HR) is compared temporally and spatially to the SPEI calculated from CRU TS datasets.…”

Section: Evaluation Criteriamentioning

confidence: 99%

A pan-African high-resolution drought index dataset

Peng

Dadson

Hirpa

et al. 2020

Earth Syst. Sci. Data

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Abstract. Droughts in Africa cause severe problems, such as crop failure, food shortages, famine, epidemics and even mass migration. To minimize the effects of drought on water and food security on Africa, a high-resolution drought dataset is essential to establish robust drought hazard probabilities and to assess drought vulnerability considering a multi- and cross-sectional perspective that includes crops, hydrological systems, rangeland and environmental systems. Such assessments are essential for policymakers, their advisors and other stakeholders to respond to the pressing humanitarian issues caused by these environmental hazards. In this study, a high spatial resolution Standardized Precipitation-Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) drought dataset is presented to support these assessments. We compute historical SPEI data based on Climate Hazards group InfraRed Precipitation with Station data (CHIRPS) precipitation estimates and Global Land Evaporation Amsterdam Model (GLEAM) potential evaporation estimates. The high-resolution SPEI dataset (SPEI-HR) presented here spans from 1981 to 2016 (36 years) with 5 km spatial resolution over the whole of Africa. To facilitate the diagnosis of droughts of different durations, accumulation periods from 1 to 48 months are provided. The quality of the resulting dataset was compared with coarse-resolution SPEI based on Climatic Research Unit (CRU) Time Series (TS) datasets, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) calculated from the Global Inventory Monitoring and Modeling System (GIMMS) project and root zone soil moisture modelled by GLEAM. Agreement found between coarse-resolution SPEI from CRU TS (SPEI-CRU) and the developed SPEI-HR provides confidence in the estimation of temporal and spatial variability of droughts in Africa with SPEI-HR. In addition, agreement of SPEI-HR versus NDVI and root zone soil moisture – with an average correlation coefficient (R) of 0.54 and 0.77, respectively – further implies that SPEI-HR can provide valuable information for the study of drought-related processes and societal impacts at sub-basin and district scales in Africa. The dataset is archived in Centre for Environmental Data Analysis (CEDA) via the following link: https://doi.org/10.5285/bbdfd09a04304158b366777eba0d2aeb (Peng et al., 2019a).

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“…Regarding the severity of below and above normal events over the study domain, Table 7 gives locations which had experienced these abnormal climatic cases. primarily driven by anthropogenic effects and natural climate variability [30,34]. The impact of these events is likely to impact on environment, communities, water resources, and agriculture [30].…”

Section: Temporal Patterns and Frequency Incidences Of Dry/wet Eventsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…East Africa (EA), classified as an arid and semi-arid (ASAL) region, continues to experience unprecedented records of drought events in comparison to other natural threats such as heat waves, torrents, cold surge, and cyclones [29,30]. Colossal records of economic losses and environmental degradation continue to be witnessed across many parts of the region [31,32].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characterization of Historical Trends of Droughts and Pluvial Scenarios over Kenya, East Africa

Ayugi¹,

Tan²,

Niu³

et al. 2019

Preprint

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This work examines drought and pluvial events based on Standardized Precipitation-Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) over Kenya from 1981 to 2016. Spatiotemporal analysis of dry and wet events is conducted for 3 and 12-month SPEI. The drought incidences were observed during the period 1984, 1987, 2000, 2006, 2009, 2015, and 2016 for SPEI-3 whilst the SPEI-12 demonstrated the manifestation of drought during the year 2000 and 2006. SPEI clearly shows the wettest period, 1997 and 1998 coinciding with the El Nino event in both time steps. SPEI -3 shows a reduction in moderate drought events while severe and extreme cases were on increase towards the end of the twentieth century. Conversely, SPEI-12 depicts an overall severe drought occurrence over the study location with observed intensity of -1.54 and cumulative frequency of 64 months during the study period. The trend of wet events is upwards in the western and central highlands while the rest of the regions show increase in dry events during the study period. Moreover, moderate dry/wet events predominate whilst extreme events occur least frequent across all grid cells. It is apparent that the study area experiences mild extreme dry events in both categories although moderately severe dry events dominate most parts of the study area. High intensity and frequency of drought is noted in SPEI-3 while least occurrences of extreme events are recorded in SPEI-12. Although drought event prevails across the study area, there is evidence of extreme flood conditions over the recent decades.

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Droughts in East Africa: Causes, impacts and resilience

Cited by 244 publications

References 130 publications

Yield and yield-reduction in recent drought years in southern Tigray, northern Ethiopia: Implications on food security

Yield and yield-reduction in recent drought years in southern Tigray, northern Ethiopia: Implications on food security

A pan-African high-resolution drought index dataset

Characterization of Historical Trends of Droughts and Pluvial Scenarios over Kenya, East Africa

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