Journal Article

Hazardous thunderstorm intensification over Lake Victoria

Davin, Edouard L., Seneviratne, Sonia I., Bedka, Kristopher, Thiery, Wim, van Lipzig, Nicole P. M., Lhermitte, Stef

2016

Overview

Weather extremes have harmful impacts on communities around Lake Victoria, where thousands of fishermen die every year because of intense night-time thunderstorms. Yet how these thunderstorms will evolve in a future warmer climate is still unknown. Here we show that Lake Victoria is projected to be a hotspot of future extreme precipitation intensification by using new satellite-based observations, a high-resolution climate projection for the African Great Lakes and coarser-scale ensemble projections. Land precipitation on the previous day exerts a control on night-time occurrence of extremes on the lake by enhancing atmospheric convergence (74%) and moisture availability (26%). The future increase in extremes over Lake Victoria is about twice as large relative to surrounding land under a high-emission scenario, as only over-lake moisture advection is high enough to sustain Clausius–Clapeyron scaling. Our results highlight a major hazard associated with climate change over East Africa and underline the need for high-resolution projections to assess local climate change. Thunderstorm activity over Lake Victoria poses a threat to human life, yet little is known about their evolution under climate change. Here, using satellite observations and high-resolution modelling, the authors project an increase in precipitation extremes over Lake Victoria, twice that of surrounding land.

• Publisher: Nature Publishing Group UK,Nature Publishing Group,Nature Portfolio
• Subject: 704/106/35 / 704/106/694/1108 / 704/106/694/2786 / Humanities and Social Sciences / multidisciplinary / open climate campaign / Science / Science (multidisciplinary)