Abstract
In 2013, the US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) refined the historical rainfall estimates over the African Continent and produced the African Rainfall Climate version 2.0 (ARC2) estimator. ARC2 offers a nearly complete record of daily rainfall estimates since 1983 at 0.1° × 0.1° resolution. Despite short-term anomalies, we identify an overall decrease in average rainfall of about 12% during the past 34 years in Uganda. Spatiotemporally, these decreases are greatest in agricultural regions of central and western Uganda, but similar rainfall decreases are also reflected in the gorilla habitat within the Bwindi Forest in Southwest Uganda. The findings carry significant implications for agriculture production, food security, wildlife habitat, and economic impact at the community and societal level.
Highlights
There are many critical uses of such data at such fine temporal and spatial scales
The averaged power spectral density of all 3,721 time series with error bounds is shown in Fig. 1E, which reflects the dominant 1- and 2-cycle per year frequencies, and the spectrogram in Fig. 1F demonstrates the consistency of these two fundamental frequencies throughout the 34-year record
The 2-cycle per year rainfalls in the East African Highlands are of unequal size, augmenting the 1-cycle per year frequency amplitude
Summary
Paddy Ssentongo[1], Abraham J. The current discrepancies between the proxy sediment record and 20th century observations, with model predictions predicting an increase in rainfall over the eastern Horn of Africa with global warming[24], are indications that more accurate model simulations and an improved understanding of the geophysical processes governing the rainfall over East Africa are needed given the fragile food security issues of this region How such changes in rainfall patterns impact infectious disease prevalence and risks will be determined by individual disease characteristics, and will be important for specific locations. The present trend in rainfall decrease is gradual enough so that there remains an opportunity to build adaptive capacity[1] through strategies[25] to make the country more resilient: anticipatory land-use management, shifts towards more sustainable agricultural practices, wastewater reuse, and infrastructure development to increase the resiliency of the society with respect to short and long-term changes in rainfall
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
