TAHMO

African Climate Articles

Published Journal Articles Relating to the African Climate

Turn Down the Heat: Climate Extremes, Regional Impacts, and the Case for Resilience [link]
This report focuses on the risks of climate change to development in Sub-Saharan Africa, South East Asia, and South Asia. Building on the 2012 report Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4°C Warmer World Must be Avoided, this new scientific analysis examines the likely impacts of present-day, 2°C, and 4°C warming on agricultural production, water resources, and coastal vulnerability for affected populations. It finds many significant climate and development impacts are already being felt in some regions, and in some cases, multiple threats of increasing extreme heat waves, sea level rise, more severe storms, droughts, and floods are expected to have further negative implications for the poorest. Climate-related extreme events could push households below the poverty threshold. High-temperature extremes appear likely to affect yields of rice, wheat, maize, and other important crops, adversely affecting food security. Promoting economic growth and the eradication of poverty and inequality will thus be an increasingly challenging task under future climate change. Immediate steps are needed to help countries adapt to the risks already locked in at current levels of 0.8°C warming, but with ambitious global action to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, many of the worst projected climate impacts could still be avoided by restricting warming below 2°C.


African climate change: 1900–2100 [link]
This paper makes a contribution to climate assessments by providing an overview of future climate change in Africa, particularly with regard to simulations of greenhouse gas.


Wind Engineering in Africa [link]
This article describes important wind-related African issues. This is a good reference for information regarding wind data; while it may not provide enough detailed information for every reader, the article does include links or descriptions of other references for which one can find other wind data.


Africa Rainfall Climatology Version 2 [link]
In 1998, the Climate Prediction Center (CPC) developed the rainfall estimator, (RFE). This estimator blends rain gauge and satellite rainfall data to create a 0.1-degree gridded spatial resolution for near real-time data for the entire African continent. Recently, a new algorithm has been developed to increase the accuracy and efficiency of the data, ARC2. The purpose of this paper was to describe a new, operational rainfall climatology from 1983-present. Historical gauge and IR data were collected and placed into the algorithm. The old algorithm, ARC1, only used data from 1995, so the development of the new algorithm tried to eliminate bias and create more accurate data.


The TRMM Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis (TMPA): Quasi-Global, Multiyear, Combined-Sensor Precipitation Estimates at Fine Scales [link]
This article describes the accuracy associated with the use of satellites for precipitation data.


Validation of TRMM Radar Rainfall Data over Major Climatic Regions in Africa [link]
How well does the TRMM system work for the African climate?


20-Year Daily Africa Precipitation Climatology Using Satellite & Gauge Data [link]
The objective of this article is to build an accurate database for the African climate, with a 4 km spatial resolution and a three-hour time resolution.