Statistically downscaled climate dataset for East Africa

Area of Science:

• Climate Science
• Environmental Science
• Meteorology

Background:

• Global Climate Models (GCMs) provide climate projections at coarse spatial resolutions, limiting their direct use in regional and local impact assessments.
• High-resolution climate data is essential for driving impact assessment models and informing adaptation strategies at local scales.
• There is a critical need for downscaled climate data to bridge the gap between GCM outputs and local-scale environmental studies.

Purpose of the Study:

• To generate high-resolution, station-based climate projections for Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania.
• To overcome the spatial resolution limitations of GCMs for impact assessment and adaptation planning.
• To provide detailed climate data for current and future periods under different Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs).

Main Methods:

• Utilized observed daily climate data from 211 stations across Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania.
• Employed 26 large-scale climate variables from National Centers for Environmental Prediction reanalysis and the Canadian Earth System Model (CanESM2).
• Applied the Statistical Down-Scaling Model (SDSM) to establish statistical relationships between large- and local-scale climate variables, generating 20 ensembles.

Main Results:

• Produced high-resolution climate projections for precipitation, maximum, and minimum temperature for the study region.
• Analyzed over 16,458 predictor instances to ensure robust downscaling.
• Generated climate projections for the current period (1961-2005) and future periods (2006-2100) under RCP2.6, RCP4.5, and RCP8.5 scenarios.

Conclusions:

• The downscaled climate projections provide essential data for local impact assessments and adaptation planning in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania.
• This high-resolution data bridges the gap between coarse GCM outputs and the needs of regional climate impact studies.
• The study offers a valuable resource for understanding future climate change impacts in East Africa under various emissions pathways.