The African Zone cuts across ten countries. PubMed Google Scholar. The climate of the region is largely varied unlike that of other equatorial regions. The region’s terrain ranges from grasslands and deserts to forests. 4) show average to well below average rainfall during SON 2015 with several also showing that a sharp decline occurred in this season with little or no recovery during 2016–2018. From Fig. The majority of the El Niño and La Niña signals over the interior of southern Africa (west of 30°E) are associated with tropical lows. Clim Res 25:29–41, Pienaar L, Boonzaaier J (2018) Drought policy brief Western Cape Agriculture. Most of the countries in the region are home to many species of wildlife including mountain gorillas and the "big five". The river basins have been merged into a “west” and “east” basin to highlight some of the regional rainfall differences. Daily rainfall data were converted to seasonal totals with Fig. Based on springs that were followed by summers of the same signed anomaly, then the following seasons were respectively defined as significantly dry (1981, 1990, 1994, 2008, 2016) or wet (1985, 1989, 1993, 1996, 2001) (Table 1). 2015). We also acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme’s Working Group on Coupled Modelling responsible for CMIP5 model data, which was provided by the Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison (PCMDI; https://pcmdi.llnl.gov/). It also has vast resources of uranium, titanium, gold, diamonds, and iron. The time series are correlated at 95% significance at each station with r values ranging from 0.61 to 0.90. The authors thank the South African Weather Service (SAWS) for providing rainfall data and Pierre Kloppers (CSAG, UCT) for assistance with data quality control. Geophys Res Lett 28(2):327–330, Blamey R, Reason CJC (2009) Numerical simulation of a mesoscale convective system over the east coast of South Africa. The primary issue facing Equatorial African countries is lack of infrastructure, which hinders adequate exploration of the natural resources in the sub-region. The weak decrease near Port Elizabeth is not significant but part of the catchment areas in the “west” basin to the north and northwest of this city are. The green polygon in both panels illustrates the location of the Eastern Cape Province in South Africa. Most of South Africa’s seasonal rainfall occurs during the warmer ... which bring rainfall to each region. Google Scholar, Hart NCG, Washington R, Reason CJC (2018) On the likelihood of tropical-extratropical cloud bands in the South Indian Convergence Zone during ENSO events. It has also been impacted severely by the COVID-19 crisis with almost 20% of South Africa’s total of ~ 400,000 cases by late July 2020 as compared to having less than 12% of the national population. 2003; Cook et al. Int J Climatol 20(11):1285–1327, Reason CJC, Rouault M, Melice J-L, Jagadheesha D (2002) Interannual winter rainfall variability in SW South Africa and large scale ocean–atmosphere interactions. Although the 2015-drought has manifest itself throughout all seasons, focus here has been placed on spring (September–November) which shows the strongest and most coherent signal. It is characterised by strong topographic, soil moisture and vegetation gradients and its coast is close to the highly variable Agulhas Current (the most intense western boundary current in the global oceans). 1991; Todd and Washington 1999; Hart et al. Most of the region shows a statistically significant decline in spring rainfall, particularly in the east, north and northeast. Most of the decreasing rainfall trend seems to result from a reduction in the number of rainfall days but not in heavy rainfall days (defined as more than > 10 mm per day). J Clim 16:4134–4143, Mason S (1995) Sea-surface temperature—South African rainfall associations 1910–1989. The Nino 3.4 index, SAM index and SIOD were downloaded from the KNMI Climate Explorer (https://climexp.knmi.nl). Figure 13b, c plot the mid-century (2040–2060) projections in the annual cycle under the RCP8.5 scenario for each model and the multi-model mean together with the difference from the current climate. The location of the Eastern Cape river basins is denoted with the black polygon. https://doi.org/10.1175/JCLI-D-19-0731.s1(in press), Jury MR, Valentine HR, Lutjeharms JRE (1993) Influence of the agulhas current on summer rainfall along the southeast coast of South For the coastal zone, spring and summer each contribute about 30% of the annual total whereas summer dominates in the northern interior (40–45%). Annual rainfall is estimated to be 20360 km 3. Eastern Africa undergoes large interannual rainfall variations. The main features of the rainfall climatology in West Africa. Countries in the Horn of Africa are rich in ancient history. Other countries include the island nations of Mauritius, Seychelles, and Comoros, all found in the Indian Ocean and two overseas territories of France which also lie in the Ocean. 2011). 9a, b) support this suggestion of changes in the strength of weather systems over the Eastern Cape with strong relative subsidence (uplift) over most of the Eastern Cape as well as much of South Africa and the ocean to the south of the country in the dry (wet) composite. Environ Res Lett 13:124025, Taljaard JJ (1985) Cut-off lows in the South African region. The Eastern Cape province of South Africa lies in the transition zone between the winter rainfall (western South Africa) and the summer rainfall (rest of subtropical southern Africa) regions which makes it an interesting but complex region to study. Although Fig. Although the sign of the anomalies is almost always the same for each station, there are some springs when there are sizeable differences in magnitude at some stations. The region is comprised of Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda and South Sudan. SST composites (not shown) indicate cool (warm) anomalies in the greater Agulhas Current region which have previously been associated with dry (wet) summers over eastern South Africa (e.g., Walker 1990; Mason 1995; Reason and Mulenga 1999; Reason 1999). It is greater than 5 mm on a total of 29 days. (1993) that the distance from the Eastern Cape coast to the core of this current which is of order a few 10 s of kms north of 33° S but of order 100 km by the time the current reaches 34° S, may play a role in the strong decrease in mean rainfall along the Eastern Cape coast (see Fig. 5 of Blamey et al. 5a, 6a). Problem. The region is comprised of Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda and South Sudan. By Vic Lang'at Junior on October 3 2017 in Society, The vast African Continent is often divided into five major geographic regions. 1b. 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