On the need for regional climate information over Africa under varying levels of global warming

The Paris Agreement of COP21 set a goal of holding global average temperature increases to below 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C. This is particularly relevant for the African context where temperatures are likely to warm faster than the global average, the magnitude of change regionally heterogeneous and many biogeophysical and socioeconomic systems particularly vulnerable to change. In this paper we conduct a short review of the literature to contextualise the lack of regional climate information under global warming levels of 1,5 and 2°C above pre-industrial levels. Most studies that provide information over Africa under specific GWLs have used data from global models, however global models cannot resolve local scale forcing (e.g. topography) nor the internal climate variability of a region. Although downscaling using regional climate models can address this, we find only one paper that has used downscaled data in GWL studies over Africa. Articles in this focus collection use data from CORDEX and GCMs to elucidate the regional and local scale climate responses to various warming levels. This may provide information that contributes meaningfully to the UNFCCC negotiation process and also for the development of adaptation and mitigation policies.

LENNARD Christopher;  NIKULIN Grigory;  DOSIO Alessandro;  MOUFOUMA-OKIA W; 

2018-06-06

IOP PUBLISHING LTD

JRC110319

1748-9326,   

http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aab2b4/meta,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC110319,   

10.1088/1748-9326/aab2b4,