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Hydrology

Climate change comes to the Sahel

Nature Climate Change volume 5, pages 720–721 (2015)Cite this article

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Persistent drought in the Sahel in the 1970s and 1980s was caused by subtle changes in global sea surface temperatures. Now model results show that the direct effect of increasing greenhouse-gas concentrations led to the subsequent recovery.

The Sahel is the semi-arid southern shore of the Saharan 'sea of sand'. It holds a special place in climate science, because of the long-standing debate on the causes of persistent drought in the 1970s and 1980s. Since the driest mid-1980s, which include 1984 — the year of the Ethiopian famine made famous by Live Aid — there has been a recovery in rainfall1, provoking further questions on what controls precipitation in the region. Writing in Nature Climate Change, Buwen Dong and Rowan Sutton2 suggest that higher atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, and the consequent atmospheric temperature increase known as the direct effect, were primarily responsible for the recovery. Given the high climatic vulnerability of the region, this study2 is sure to captivate a broader audience, including development practitioners. This presents an opportunity to synthesize current understanding of the dynamics of future climate change in the context of past drought persistence.

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Figure 1: Sahel precipitation anomalies (10–20° N, 20° W–40° E) for 1979–2008.

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  1. Alessandra Giannini is at the International Research Institute for Climate and Society, The Earth Institute, Columbia University, Palisades, New York 10964-8000, USA,

    Alessandra Giannini

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  1. Alessandra Giannini
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Correspondence to Alessandra Giannini.

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Giannini, A. Climate change comes to the Sahel. Nature Clim Change 5, 720–721 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate2739

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