Climate and climatic variability of rainfall over eastern Africa

Abstract

This review examines several aspects of the climate of eastern Africa. The climatic commonality throughout the region is the frequent occurrence of drought severe enough to incapacitate the population. Because of recent droughts and evidence of disastrous, long‐term climatic change, the region has become a major focus of meteorological research. This review covers six relevant topics: climatic regionalization, seasonal cycle, intraseasonal variability, interannual variability, recent trends, and seasonal forecasting. What emerges is a markedly different view of the factors modulating rainfall, the dynamics associated with the seasons, and the character of teleconnections within the region and the interrelationships between the various rainy seasons. Some of the most important points are the following. (1) The paradigm of two rainy seasons resulting from the biannual equatorial passage of the Intertropical Convergence Zone is inadequate. (2) The “long rains” should not be treated as a single season, as character, causal factors, and teleconnections are markedly different in each month. (3) The long rains have been declining continuously in recent decades. (4) The Madden‐Julian Oscillation has emerged as a factor in interannual and intraseasonal variability, but the relative strength of Pacific and Indian Ocean anomalies plays a major role in the downward trend. (5) Factors governing the short rains are nonstationary. (6) Droughts have become longer and more intense and tend to continue across rainy seasons, and their causes are not adequately understood. (7) Atmospheric variables provide more reliable seasonal forecasts than the factors traditionally considered in forecast models, such as sea surface temperatures and El Niño–Southern Oscillation.