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Simulating the link between ENSO and summer drought in Southern Africa using regional climate models

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Abstract

This study evaluates the capability of regional climate models (RCMs) in simulating the link between El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and Southern African droughts. It uses the Standardized Precipitation-Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI, computed using rainfall and temperature data) to identify 3-month drought over Southern Africa, and compares the observed and simulated correlation between ENSO and SPEI. The observation data are from the Climate Research Unit, while the simulation data are from ten RCMs (ARPEGE, CCLM, HIRHAM, RACMO, REMO, PRECIS, RegCM3, RCA, WRF, and CRCM) that participated in the regional climate downscaling experiment (CORDEX) project. The study analysed the rainy season (December–February) data for 19 years (1989–2008). The results show a strong link between ENSO and droughts (SPEI) over Southern Africa. The link is owing to the influence of ENSO on both rainfall and temperature fields, but the correlation between ENSO and temperature is stronger than the correlation between ENSO and rainfall. Hence, using only rainfall to monitor droughts in Southern Africa may underestimate the influence of ENSO on the droughts. Only few CORDEX RCMs simulate the influence of ENSO on Southern African drought as observed. In this regard, the ARPEGE model shows the best simulation, while CRCM shows the worst. The different in the performance may be due to their lateral boundary conditions. The RCA-simulated link between ENSO and Southern African droughts is sensitive to the global dataset used as the lateral boundary conditions. In some cases, using RCA to downscale global circulation models (GCM) simulations adds value to the simulated link between ENSO and the droughts, but in other cases the downscaling adds no value to the link. The added value of RCA to the simulated link decreases as the capability of the GCM to simulate the link increases. This study suggests that downscaling GCM simulations with RCMs over Southern Africa may improve or depreciate the simulated ENSO-drought link over the region.

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Acknowledgments

The project was supported with grants from the National Research Foundation (NRF, South Africa) and the Applied Centre for the Climate and Earth Sciences (ACCESS, South Africa). Computations facility was provided by the Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC, South Africa). We thank CORDEX for making the data freely available. We also thank the two anonymous reviewers, whose comments improved the quality of this manuscript.

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  1. Climate System Analysis Group, Department of Environmental and Geographical Sciences, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

    Arlindo Meque & Babatunde J. Abiodun

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Meque, A., Abiodun, B.J. Simulating the link between ENSO and summer drought in Southern Africa using regional climate models. Clim Dyn 44, 1881–1900 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-014-2143-3

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