Global climate change likely contributed to the 2014 drought in East Africa

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-11/uoc--gcc110515.php

Public Release: 5-Nov-2015
Global climate change
Anthropogenic (human-caused) warming in the west Pacific likely contributed to the 2014 drought in East Africa, say UCSB and USGS climate scientists
University of California - Santa Barbara

It comes as no surprise to geographer Chris Funk that East Africa has been particularly hard hit with back-to-back droughts this year and last. In fact, he and colleagues at the UC Santa Barbara /U.S. Geological Survey's Climate Hazards Group (CHG) predicted the area's 2014 event based the increasing differential between extremely warm sea surface temperatures in the west and central Pacific Ocean.

Now with the same data set, CHG scientists have confirmed not only that this temperature differential is a leading indicator of drought in southern Ethiopia, Kenya and northeastern Tanzania but also that extremely warm west Pacific temperatures, which contributed to the 2014 drought and recent rainfall declines in the region, would not be possible without climate change caused by human activity. Their findings appear in a special issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, which examines annual extreme weather events to evaluate evidence of climate change.

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"Because of droughts in 2014 and 2015, parts of south central Ethiopia may be facing serious food insecurity," said Funk, who is also an affiliated research professor in UCSB's Department of Geography. "Our research suggests that anthropogenic warming in the west Pacific may be making these droughts more frequent, so that a one-in-five-year drought now seems to be happening every four years or so. This increase in drought frequency reduces food supplies and incomes for millions of Africans, giving them less of a chance to recover and prosper, which helps feed a cycle of poverty."

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