The Horn of Africa drylands (HAD) are among the most vulnerable regions to hydroclimatic extremes. The two rainfall seasons — long and short rains — exhibit high intraseasonal and interannual variability. Accurately simulating the long and short rains has proven to be a significant challenge for the current generation of weather forecast and climate models, revealing key gaps in our understanding of the drivers of rainfall in the region. In contrast to existing climate modelling and observation-based studies, here we analyze the HAD rainfall from an observationally-constrained Lagrangian perspective. We quantify and map the major oceanic and terrestrial sources of moisture driving the variability in the long and short rains. Specifically, our results show that the Arabian Sea (through its influence on the northeast monsoon circulation) and the southern Indian Ocean (via the Somali low level jet) contribute ~80% of the HAD rainfall. We see that moisture contributions from land sources are very low at the beginning of each season, but supply up to ~20% from the second month onwards, i.e., when the oceanic-origin rainfall has already increased water availability over land. Further, our findings suggest that the interannual variability in the long and short rains is driven by changes in circulation patterns and regional thermodynamic processes rather than changes in ocean evaporation. Our results can be used to better evaluate, and potentially improve, numerical weather prediction and climate models, which has important implications for (sub-)seasonal forecasts and long-term projections of the HAD rainfall.

This study provides a global analysis of drought metrics obtained from several climatic, hydrologic and ecological variables in a climate change framework using CMIP6 model data. A comprehensive analysis of the evolution of drought severity on a global scale is carried out for the historical experiment (1850-2014) and for future simulations under a high emissions scenario (SSP5-8.5). This study focuses on assessing trends in the magnitude and duration of drought events according to different standardised indices over the world land-surface area. The spatial and temporal agreement between the different drought indices on a global scale was also evaluated. Overall, there is a fairly large consensus among models and drought metrics in pointing to drought increase in southern North America, Central America, the Amazon region, the Mediterranean, southern Africa and southern Australia. Our results show important spatial differences in drought projections, which are highly dependent on the drought metric employed. While a strong relationship between climatic indices was evident, climatic and ecological drought metrics showed less dependency over both space and time. Importantly, our study demonstrates uncertainties in future projections of drought trends and their interannual variability, stressing the importance of coherent hydrological and plant physiological patterns when analysing CMIP6 model simulations of droughts under a warming climate scenario.

The spatiotemporal evolution of droughts in the Congo River Basin (CRB) from 1981–2018 was investigated using the Standardised Precipitation Index (SPI) and Standardised Precipitation–Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) to assess the roles of precipitation and potential evapotranspiration. The results confirmed a notable trend toward drier conditions, particularly in parts of the northern and central basin, as well as in the south of the CRB, which was associated with increases in potential evapotranspiration and declining rainfall. Global outputs of the Lagrangian model FLEXPART were used to model air masses over four important climatological regions considered to be the main sources of precipitation in the CRB, and their contributions to precipitation over the basin were computed. These analyses confirmed that moisture in the CRB is ~60% self-sourced; African lands were the next greatest contributor, followed by the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. It was found that a reduction in contributions of the sources prevailed during 53 meteorological drought episodes that affected the CRB during the study period and it could be inferred that a reduction in moisture supplied from the Atlantic and Indian Oceans played an important role in the onset of drought episodes. It was also observed that the contribution of moisture from all sources to the CRB decreased during the study period, especially over the northern half of the basin, where the main humid forest of the CRB is located, confirming the importance of water transport and local hydroclimatological dynamics on the hydrological conditions, ecosystems, and local communities of the CRB.

Previous studies have estimated that 25% to 35% of Amazonian precipitation comes from evapotranspiration (ET) within the basin. However, due to simplifying assumptions of traditional models, these studies primarily focus on large spatial and temporal scales. In this work we use the Weather Research and Forecast (WRF) regional climate model with the added capability of water vapor tracers to track the moisture from Amazonian ET at the native WRF resolution. The tracers reveal that the well-mixed assumption of simpler models does not hold, as local ET is more efficiently rained out of the atmospheric column than remote sources of moisture, particularly in the eastern part of the basin. Recycled precipitation shows a strong annual and semi-annual signal, associated with the passage of the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone. The tracers also reveal a strong diurnal cycle of Amazonian water vapor related to the diurnal cycle of ET, convective precipitation and advected moisture. ET increases from early morning into the afternoon, some of this moisture is rained out through convective storms in the early evening, while later in the night strong winds associated with the South American Low Level Jet advect moisture downwind. Visualizing the Amazonian water vapor highlights its diurnal beating pattern and suggests that the Amazon has “younger” water than other regions in the globe, with very efficient recycling of local moisture.