Publication Date:
2021-05-19
Description:
Southern Africa, broadly defined here as Africa south of the equator, is a region prone to
pronounced flood and drought events and significant climate variability on a range of
time scales. Some of this variability is thought to be forced remotely via ENSO (e.g.,
Nicholson and Entekhabi, 1986; Lindesay et al., 1988; Mason and Jury, 1997; Nicholson
and Kim, 1997; Reason et al., 2000; Allan et al., 2003) while some is related to
variability in the neighbouring Indian and Atlantic Oceans (e.g., Hirst and Hasternrath,
1983; Lough, 1986; Ogallo et al., 1988; Walker, 1990; Mason, 1995; Reason and
Mulenga, 1999; Reason, 1999; Behera and Yamagata, 2001; Rouault et al., 2003) or to
local land surface processes (Zheng and Eltahir, 1998; Douville et al., 2001). It should be
stated at the outset that climate variability over southern Africa is complex with a
multitude of forcing factors that interact with each other and wax and wane in their
importance through the record. Landman and Mason (1997), Richard et al. (2000), Allan
et al. (1996, 2003) amongst others all provide evidence of how the ENSO influence on
southern Africa has varied while Mulenga et al. (2003) show that some dry seasons over
northern South Africa may be directly related to ENSO whereas others show an influence
from the subtropical and midlatitude Atlantic. In this paper, the focus is on possible
relationships between the Atlantic Ocean and southern African climate and we begin by
considering the annual cycle of SST, winds and moisture fluxes over this region
Description:
Dept. of Oceanography, University of Cape Town,
Private Bag, Rondebosch, 7701, South Africa
EGS Department, University of Cape Town
South African Weather Service, Pretoria, South Africa
Description:
Unpublished
Keywords:
Climate prediction
Repository Name:
AquaDocs
Type:
Theses and Dissertations
,
Bachelor thesis
Format:
1609102 bytes
Format:
application/pdf
Permalink
