TY - JOUR
T1 - A global perspective on African climate
AU - Giannini, Alessandra
AU - Biasutti, Michela
AU - Held, Isaac M.
AU - Sobel, Adam H.
N1 - Funding Information:
Acknowledgements Jeffrey Sachs, David Battisti, Polly Ericksen, Tsegay Wolde-Georgis, Jian Lu and Tom Delworth for their encouragement, and for sharing their knowledge. Naomi Naik for her technical support, especially for her patience in downloading model output. The Intergover-mental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the Program for Climate Modeling Diagnosis and Intercomparison (PCMDI) for making the model output available in preparation of the IPCC’s 4th Assessment Report. The Earth Institute at Columbia University’s Cross-Cutting Initiative on Climate and Society (led by Mark Cane, Cynthia Rosenzweig and Steve Zebiak), NOAA (AG: Office of Global Programs grant NA07GP0213, MB: grant NAO30AR4320179), and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation Fellowship (MB, AHS) for their financial support.
PY - 2008/10
Y1 - 2008/10
N2 - We describe the global climate system context in which to interpret African environmental change to support planning and implementation of policymaking action at national, regional and continental scales, and to inform the debate between proponents of mitigation v. adaptation strategies in the face of climate change. We review recent advances and current challenges in African climate research and exploit our physical understanding of variability and trends to shape our outlook on future climate change. We classify the various mechanisms that have been proposed as relevant for understanding variations in African rainfall, emphasizing a "tropospheric stabilization" mechanism that is of importance on interannual time scales as well as for the future response to warming oceans. Two patterns stand out in our analysis of twentieth century rainfall variability: a drying of the monsoon regions, related to warming of the tropical oceans, and variability related to the El Niño-Southern Oscillation. The latest generation of climate models partly captures this recent continent-wide drying trend, attributing it to the combination of anthropogenic emissions of aerosols and greenhouse gases, the relative contribution of which is difficult to quantify with the existing model archive. The same climate models fail to reach a robust agreement regarding the twenty-first century outlook for African rainfall, in a future with increasing greenhouse gases and decreasing aerosol loadings. Such uncertainty underscores current limitations in our understanding of the global climate system that it is necessary to overcome if science is to support Africa in meeting its development goals.
AB - We describe the global climate system context in which to interpret African environmental change to support planning and implementation of policymaking action at national, regional and continental scales, and to inform the debate between proponents of mitigation v. adaptation strategies in the face of climate change. We review recent advances and current challenges in African climate research and exploit our physical understanding of variability and trends to shape our outlook on future climate change. We classify the various mechanisms that have been proposed as relevant for understanding variations in African rainfall, emphasizing a "tropospheric stabilization" mechanism that is of importance on interannual time scales as well as for the future response to warming oceans. Two patterns stand out in our analysis of twentieth century rainfall variability: a drying of the monsoon regions, related to warming of the tropical oceans, and variability related to the El Niño-Southern Oscillation. The latest generation of climate models partly captures this recent continent-wide drying trend, attributing it to the combination of anthropogenic emissions of aerosols and greenhouse gases, the relative contribution of which is difficult to quantify with the existing model archive. The same climate models fail to reach a robust agreement regarding the twenty-first century outlook for African rainfall, in a future with increasing greenhouse gases and decreasing aerosol loadings. Such uncertainty underscores current limitations in our understanding of the global climate system that it is necessary to overcome if science is to support Africa in meeting its development goals.
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U2 - 10.1007/s10584-008-9396-y
DO - 10.1007/s10584-008-9396-y
M3 - Review article
AN - SCOPUS:51749094137
SN - 0165-0009
VL - 90
SP - 359
EP - 383
JO - Climatic Change
JF - Climatic Change
IS - 4
ER -