The climatic causes of famine in Africa

A recent report on the Swiss Radio station SRF 2 KULTUR highlighted the climatic and man-made causes of the hunger catastrophe in Africa. WFSC member Prof. Sonia Seneviratne, Land-Climate Dynamics, lends insight into the challenges of predicting the effects of global warming on drought.

Arid land
Image: Unsplash

In South Sudan, Yemen, Somalia, and Northeast Nigeria, millions of people are threatened by starvation. A recent edition of the Kontext radio program on SRF 2 KULTUR reported that drought hits these populations with full force, and wars and conflicts further hamper the supply of food.

Kontext reports that severe weather events occur more often; however, how global warming further effects drought is, as yet, difficult to say. WFSC member Prof. Sonia Seneviratne explains what makes drought in Africa a challenge to predict. She says what is important is the not only the time between rainfall but also the amount of evapotranspiration. Therefore, the global land evaporative demand must be quantified and predicted along with the forecasting of rainfall, all together making drought a complicated event to predict. Climate models are also hampered by the limited weather data available from Africa, as compared to other areas of the world. This limited data is also often not accessible, Seneviratne comments, due to political and commercial motivations. Researchers are making headway, however.

Listen to the entire program external pagehere (in German).

Seneviratne is featured in the Massnahmen gegen die Hungersnot segment at 12:00.

Read a recent article on the topic in Nature Climate Change from a team authors including Seneviratne external pagehere.

Title: Land–atmosphere feedbacks amplify aridity increase over land under global warming

Abstract: The response of the terrestrial water cycle to global warming is central to issues including water resources, agriculture and ecosystem health. Recent studies indicate that aridity, defined in terms of atmospheric supply (precipitation, P) and demand (potential evapotranspiration, Ep) of water at the land surface, will increase globally in a warmer world.

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