A Review of Climate Dynamics and Climate Variability in Eastern Africa

This paper presents an overview of regional climate and spatial and temporal aspects of climate variability in eastern Africa. Causal mechanisms of climate variability are also considered. In general, widely diverse climates, ranging from desert to forest, exist over a relatively small area. Rainfall seasonality is quite complex, changing within tens of kilometers. Despite this diversity, interannual fluctuations of rainfall are markedly uniform over the region and appear to be governed by the same factors. In much of the region the annual cycle of rainfall is bimodal, with a main rainy season in March-to-May and “short rains” of October–November. The main rains are less variable, so that interannual…