According to research led by The University of Texas at Austin, seasonal rainfall is expected to rise significantly in East Africa over the next few decades in response to increased greenhouse gases.
According to research led by The University of Texas at Austin, seasonal rainfall is expected to rise significantly in East Africa over the next few decades in response to increased greenhouse gases.
The study, published in July in Climate Dynamics, used high-resolution simulations to find that the amount of precipitation during the rainy season known as the “short rains” could double by the end of the century, continuing a trend that has already been observed in recent years. The season known as the “long rains” on the other hand, is expected to remain stable according to the new projections. These results are in contrast to previous analyses that associated global warming with drier conditions that occurred earlier this century.
“There are two East African rainy seasons with different sensitivities to greenhouse gases,” said Kerry Cook, a professor in the Jackson School of Geosciences’ Department of Geological Sciences. “Our paper shows that the short rains will continue to increase—in fact, flooding and locust infestations are already occurring—and that there is no drying trend for the long rains.”
Both the transportation of water vapor by atmospheric circulation and the distribution of rain are sensitive to differences between ocean and land temperatures. These differences occur because oceans warm and cool more slowly than the land due to differences in heat capacity. When the short rains develop, typically with a peak in November, the southern hemisphere circulation is in a summer pattern, with high pressure over the ocean and low pressure over land in the subtropics, setting up a circulation pattern that funnels more moisture over East Africa. It is this rainy season that is more sensitive to greenhouse-gas induced climate change.
Read more at University of Texas at Austin
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