Drivers of future changes in East African precipitation

Precipitation amounts over East Africa have been declining over the last decades. These changes and future climate change over the region are highly debated. This study analyzes drivers of future precipitation changes over East Africa by applying a classification of circulation patterns on 15 historical and future members of the COordinated Regional climate Downscaling EXperiment. Typical circulation types (CTs) are obtained. Under a high emission scenario, changes in the frequency of occurrence of these CTsattribute for23%of the total change in precipitation over East Africa by the end of the century. The remaining part (77%) is not related to East African synoptics, e.g. changes in moisture content, local/mesoscale feedbacks, and changes in moisture influx. These other effects comprise increases in precipitation close to the equator and the Somali region, while decreases are found over northwestern Ethiopia, the Sudan region and the lake areas.journal_title: Environmental Research Letters article_type: lett article_title: Drivers of future changes in East African precipitation copyright_information: © 2016 IOP Publishing Ltd license_information: cc-by Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI. date_received: 2016-03-02 date_accepted: 2016-10-21 date_epub: 2016-11-08status: publishe