Science Source
Understanding Recent Eastern Horn of Africa Rainfall Variability and Change
- Examines observations and sea surface temperature (SST)-forced simulations to study seasonal eastern Africa rainfall and its SST sensitivity from 1979–2012
- Notes that the eastern Horn is drier than the rest of equatorial Africa, with two distinct wet seasons
- Notes that whereas the October–December wet season has become wetter, the March–May season has become drier
- Finds that the climatological rainfall in simulations driven by observed SSTs captures this bimodal regime
- Identifies the most likely locations of SST forcing of precipitation trends in the model, and conceivably also in nature
- Results indicate:
- The October–December precipitation increase is mostly due to western Indian Ocean warming
- October–December eastern Horn rain variability is strongly associated with El Niño–Southern Oscillation and Indian Ocean dipole phenomena on interannual scales, in both model and observations
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