Water and Environmental Change

Last time we have talked about the reason behind extreme events -- the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), which contributed to Africa’s precipitation in the eastern region via its positive phase. Under the current situation, the effects of IOD in the future  could be worse off due to climate change , especially for Africa. Thus, today I want to continue with this topic and extend our focus to the bigger picture of the future, which is associated with Africa’s resilience to any changes regarding climate change.   In a warmer world, there will be more strong positive IODs, such as the one in 2019 that caused devastating floods in east Africa (eg: Mozambique), to bring more extreme events. The climate extremes in 2019 tend to occur more frequently under global warming in the future ( Cai et al., 2021 ). Also, it has been illustrated that pIODs are becoming more common. The occurrence and effects of pIODs are expected to increase with greenhouse warming from the modelling reconstruction and predic

In   past  blogs we have talked about how does climate change affect Africa’s countries via extreme events at different locations. So, today’s focus will be the driver of these events, which is a climate phenomenon  that is similar to   El Niño  called “Indian Ocean Dipole”. It has been   declared  that there has been a negative Indian Ocean Dipole   in  July of 2021 --   the first negative event in five years .  In this blog, I will explain what is this and how does this affect Africa’s water system.   The frequent flooding and landslides in East Africa each year have caused catastrophic damages to the region. This has been linked to  the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) - the difference in  sea-surface temperatures in opposite parts of the Indian Ocean  (the western Indian Ocean and the eastern Indian Ocean south of Indonesia), which results in changes in the air moisture and contributes to the rainfall variability in all countries around the Indian Ocean Basin. It can be considered as “the

Hello and welcome back! Following the blog last week, I would like to share you with the case study of a flood event in East Africa.    Today’s case study is about the scenic country in southeastern Africa -- Mozambique. It is the coast area that separates mainland Africa from the island of  Madagascar  by the Mozambique Channel, which creates its extensive coastline and natural harbours ( figure 1 ). The great Zambezi River has provided large water resources for irrigation and thus an important basis for agriculture and hydroelectric power in the region.  Figure 1  Location of Mozambique, Africa However, climate-related disasters are considered to be one of the most serious challenges in Mozambique ( INGC , 2009 ). It is a country that suffers a lot from tropical cyclones due to climate change and its low-lying location, which brings  strong winds, storm surge,   and rain-fall triggered floods  to the land.   The situation becomes even worse with the severe impacts and uncertainties b