Summer rainfall in one of the world’s most drought-prone regions can now be predicted months or years in advance, climate scientists at the Met Office and the University of Exeter say.
Summer rainfall in one of the world’s most drought-prone regions can now be predicted months or years in advance, climate scientists at the Met Office and the University of Exeter say.
The Sahel region of Africa – a strip across the southern edge of the Sahara from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea – is a semi-arid landscape between the desert to the north and the savannah to the south.
Much of the food produced in the Sahel depends on summer rainfall, and the region experienced major droughts during the 1970s and 1980s.
The new research used the Met Office Hadley Centre’s Decadal Prediction System and found that the model was good at predicting summer Sahel rainfall over the forthcoming five years.
Read more at University of Exeter
