Misiani, HO, Finney, DL, Segele, ZT et al. (4 more authors) (2020) Circulation Patterns Associated with Current and Future Rainfall over Ethiopia and South Sudan from a Convection-Permitting Model. Atmosphere, 11 (12). 1352. ISSN 2073-4433
Abstract
Ethiopia and South Sudan contain several population centers and important ecosystems that depend on July–August rainfall. Here we use two models to understand current and future rainfall: the first ever pan-African numerical model of climate change with explicit convection and a parameterized model that resembles a typical regional climate model at 4.5 and 25 km horizontal grid-spacing, respectively. The explicit convection and higher resolution of the first model offer a greatly improved representation of both the frequency and intensity of rainfall, when compared to the parametrized convection model. Furthermore, only this model has success in capturing the east–west propagation of rainfall over the full diurnal cycle. Enhanced low-level westerlies were found for extremely wet days, though this response was weaker in the explicit convection model. The increased orographic detail in the explicit model resulted in the splitting of the low-level Turkana Jet core into smaller cores, and inhibited its penetration far into South Sudan. Some projected changes were found to be independent of model, such as changes in the strength of Somali and Turkana jets, as well as the shifting of Turkana jet core to lower levels. However, the explicit model end-of-century projections showed a larger and clearer decrease in wet days, accompanied by an increase in wet day intensity and extreme rainfall. This study highlights serious limitations of relying solely on simulations which parameterize convection to inform decisions in the region of South Sudan and Ethiopia.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
Keywords: | convection-permitting; climate change; Ethiopia; South Sudan; rainfall; Turkana jet |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Inst for Climate & Atmos Science (ICAS) (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number NERC (Natural Environment Research Council) NE/M02038X/1 NERC (Natural Environment Research Council) NE/M02038X/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 06 Jan 2021 14:53 |
Last Modified: | 06 Jan 2021 14:53 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | MDPI |
Identification Number: | 10.3390/atmos11121352 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:169447 |