The Role of Sustainable Land Management for Climate ... - CAADP

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2.2 The Impact of Climate Change on Sub-Saharan Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa will be strongly affected by climate change. In fact, the increased trend in
natural disasters mentioned above is likely in part a response to a warmer climate 1 . The region is
particularly vulnerable to climate change because of its dependence on rainfed agriculture for
both food and income, and high poverty and malnutrition levels. Modeling studies indicate that
the African continent is already warmer today than it was a 100 years ago (Hulme, et al. 2001)
and that it will continue to warm throughout this century (Christensen et al. 2007; Cline 2007;
Hulme et al. 2001). The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Fourth
Assessment Report (AR4) predicts that temperature increases will exceed the expected global
mean increase of 2.5 o C in all regions of SSA (Table 2-1) (Christensen et al., 2007). Furthermore,
warming is expected to be more intense in the interior semi-arid tropical margins of the Sahara
and central southern Africa (Hulme, et al. 2001). Cline (2007) projects mean temperature
increases of 3-4 o C by the end of the 21 st century for most individual countries in the region
(Table 2-2). Some of these temperatures may well exceed the optimal temperature for
agriculture for some key food crops in the region.
Predictions of climate change impacts for precipitation patterns are much less certain and
consistent across models (Hulme et al. 2001; Boko et al. 2007). Generally, dry areas are expected
to get drier and wet areas are likely to become wetter (IPCC AR4 2007). Rainfall is likely to
decrease in much of the winter rainfall region in South Africa and in the western margins of
Southern Africa. In East Africa, mean rainfall is likely to increase—but most of the additional
rainfall may fall on the sea, and not on land (see Funk et al. 2008). In the Sahel, the Guinean
Coast and the southern Sahara, it is uncertain how rainfall will evolve in this century. Overall,
the subtropics are likely to get drier and the tropics are likely to see an increase or little change in
precipitation (Table 2-3, Figure 2-3) (Christensen et al. 2007; Cline 2007) .
2.3 The Role of Extreme Events
Easterling et al. (2007) cite several recent studies that project increased frequency of extreme
weather events such as droughts and floods, which will have more serious consequences for food
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$ !According to Conway et al. (2008), robust identification and attribution of hydrological change is severely limited
by poor data, conflicting behavior across basins/regions, low signal-to-noise ratios, sometimes weak rainfall-runoff
relationships and limited assessment of the magnitude and potential effects of land use and cover change or other
anthropogenic influences (p. 24).!
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