Abstract
The Subsaharan drought of the early 1970s attracted widespread attention. Particularly prominent was the suggestion that it was not likely to disappear in the near future, and could even persist into the next century1–3. (The basis of this standpoint is reviewed in ref. 4.) In contrast, the post-1974 discussion of the Subsaharan climate has tended to the opinion that the drought ended by 1974 or 19754–11. That this may not be the case has been neglected. It was not investigated during several detailed studies of West African rainfall published since 197512–16, because the data sets used terminated in 1974 or 1975, and is only weakly suggested by the World Meteorological Organization's annual summaries of significant meteorological events17. Strong claims that the drought continued beyond 1974 have been few, very brief, regionally focused, and qualitative18–20. I therefore now provide a 1975–81 update of a Subsaharan rainfall index previously published for 1941–7421. This confirms the drought's persistence.
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Lamb, P. Persistence of Subsaharan drought. Nature 299, 46–48 (1982). https://doi.org/10.1038/299046a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/299046a0
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