2018 - Drought and Water Crisis in Southern Africa

Abstract

The results presented in this short technical report are focused on the 2018 Water Crisis that affected the Western Cape Province in South Africa. In one side it includes an analysis carried out by the JRC´s "Disaster Risk Management" Unit and the Global Drought Observatory (GDO report), which periodically provides an overview of precipitation patterns and its anomalies, including also those related to vegetation greenness and soil moisture values respect to the long term average. In the other, it presents a complementary section carried out by the WEFE4DEV Work Package of the Water-Energy-Food-Ecosystems (WEFE) Project which contributes to the online African Atlas on WEFE Cooperation. The analysis is focused on the medium to long term spatio-temporal patterns and behaviour of precipitation and temperature patterns. Both help the community to better understand the exceptional character of these phonomena, their periodicity and the scale at which these events occur. The outcomes are helpful for policymakers to identify current and future issues that impact water management, food and energy security in Africa, as well as they providevaluable information to better define mitigation measures, resilience and adaptation policies.