Siderius, C, Kolusu, SR, Todd, MC et al. (13 more authors) (2021) Climate variability affects water-energy-food infrastructure performance in East Africa. One Earth, 4 (3). pp. 397-410. ISSN 2590-3322
Abstract
The need to assess major infrastructure performance under a changing climate is widely recognized yet rarely practiced, particularly in rapidly growing African economies. Here, we consider high-stakes investments across the water, energy, and food sectors for two major river basins in a climate transition zone in Africa. We integrate detailed interpretation of observed and modeled climate-system behavior with hydrological modeling and decision-relevant performance metrics. For the Rufiji River in Tanzania, projected risks for the mid-21st century are similar to those of the present day, but for the Lake Malawi-Shire River, future risk exceeds that experienced during the 20th century. In both basins a repeat of an early-20th century multi-year drought would challenge the viability of proposed infrastructure. A long view, which emphasizes past and future changes in variability, set within a broader context of climate-information interpretation and decision making, is crucial for screening the risk to infrastructure.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
---|---|
Authors/Creators: |
|
Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) |
Keywords: | climate risk; transition zone; variability; drought; infrastructure; contingency; water-energy-food nexus |
Dates: |
|
Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Sustainability Research Institute (SRI) (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 22 Apr 2022 11:16 |
Last Modified: | 22 Apr 2022 11:16 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Elsevier |
Identification Number: | 10.1016/j.oneear.2021.02.009 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:185935 |