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A. Mokssit
1 Introduction
Interest in the climate system of Africa has been constantly increasing in recent
years. The scientific interest and studies has yield many discoveries such as
teleconnections between the African climate and other centres of the tropical
variability. Both statistical techniques applied to raw data and the use of General
Circulation Models (GCM) allowed to make such important progress in studying the
African climate. The social and economic characteristics of most African countries
depend on the seasonal and interannual variability of temperature and rainfall
patterns. While anomalous variations in these shorter time scale patterns can have
serious effects on society, the vulnerability of society to longer-term climate change,
occurring over periods of decades to centuries, will depend on its ability to
understand and respond to this change.
The rising interest in Climate Change and its impacts is the consequence of
human action on his environment through mainly release of green-house gases.
Many studies in Europe and North America show an increasing trend of regional air
and surface temperatures. In Africa, it has been difficult for scientists to carry out
studies in climate change detection due to lack of data.
Through the initiative of the regional Rapporteur on climate change detection
and attribution studies in Africa, a CCI/CLIV AR workshop to develop climate
indices for Africa has been held in Morocco from 18 to 23 February, 200l. The aim
of this workshop was to bring together scientists from a number of African countries
to enable them make inventories of their data bank, quality control the existing data
and produce climate change related indices for each station using daily rainfall and
temperature data. The derived indices will be used for climate change assessment
at the regional level. The particularity of this workshop was related to its agenda
which was divided in three parts: 1- tele-forum: an intensive exchange of emails, fax
and letters took place to inform, to send examples and to explain the work to be done
during the workshop; 2- pre-forum which consisted in training the participants
(capacity building action); 3- the forum where each participant demonstrates his
ability to perform national and local study, write a report for their countries and
make a presentation.
At the end of the workshop, the participants have been provided with the
statistical software used to produce climate indices during the workshop and have
been encouraged to update the indices regularly and compute a full set for all the
daily records back at their institutions.
2 African Climate Overview
Africa is a vast continent and consequently experiences a wide variety of climate
regimes. It has the largest tropical land mass with its east-west extent in the
northern Hemisphere being particularly impressive. While the poleward extremes
of the continent experience winter rainfall associated with the passage of midlatitude
A. Mokssit
1 Introduction
Interest in the climate system of Africa has been constantly increasing in recent
years. The scientific interest and studies has yield many discoveries such as
teleconnections between the African climate and other centres of the tropical
variability. Both statistical techniques applied to raw data and the use of General
Circulation Models (GCM) allowed to make such important progress in studying the
African climate. The social and economic characteristics of most African countries
depend on the seasonal and interannual variability of temperature and rainfall
patterns. While anomalous variations in these shorter time scale patterns can have
serious effects on society, the vulnerability of society to longer-term climate change,
occurring over periods of decades to centuries, will depend on its ability to
understand and respond to this change.
The rising interest in Climate Change and its impacts is the consequence of
human action on his environment through mainly release of green-house gases.
Many studies in Europe and North America show an increasing trend of regional air
and surface temperatures. In Africa, it has been difficult for scientists to carry out
studies in climate change detection due to lack of data.
Through the initiative of the regional Rapporteur on climate change detection
and attribution studies in Africa, a CCI/CLIV AR workshop to develop climate
indices for Africa has been held in Morocco from 18 to 23 February, 200l. The aim
of this workshop was to bring together scientists from a number of African countries
to enable them make inventories of their data bank, quality control the existing data
and produce climate change related indices for each station using daily rainfall and
temperature data. The derived indices will be used for climate change assessment
at the regional level. The particularity of this workshop was related to its agenda
which was divided in three parts: 1- tele-forum: an intensive exchange of emails, fax
and letters took place to inform, to send examples and to explain the work to be done
during the workshop; 2- pre-forum which consisted in training the participants
(capacity building action); 3- the forum where each participant demonstrates his
ability to perform national and local study, write a report for their countries and
make a presentation.
At the end of the workshop, the participants have been provided with the
statistical software used to produce climate indices during the workshop and have
been encouraged to update the indices regularly and compute a full set for all the
daily records back at their institutions.
2 African Climate Overview
Africa is a vast continent and consequently experiences a wide variety of climate
regimes. It has the largest tropical land mass with its east-west extent in the
northern Hemisphere being particularly impressive. While the poleward extremes
of the continent experience winter rainfall associated with the passage of midlatitude