Future changes in convective storms across Africa in new km-scale climate scenarios

非洲是一个独特的脆弱地区。随着气候变化，干旱和洪水预计将在未来增加，这是对雨养农业、饮用水供应、生态系统和人类生命的重大威胁。这些极端现象是对流驱动降水变化的一种表现，而对流驱动降水在整个非洲占主导地位。然而，尽管它们很重要，我们对对流风暴的特性在未来如何变化的理解是有限的。这部分是由于传统气候模式的分辨率相对较低，它提供了对流的简化表示。随着超级计算能力的提高，我们现在能够运行非常高分辨率（千米尺度）的模型，这些模型可以更好地代表对流和单个风暴。第一个所谓的“对流允许”非洲气候模拟（CP4A）是作为IMPALA项目[2]的一部分进行的，并为非洲未来的变化提供了新的见解。例如，它显示了极端湿降水和极端干降水的增加，这对影响至关重要。

Africa is a uniquely vulnerable region. Both drought and flooding are expected to increase in future with climate change [1], which is a major threat to rainfed agriculture, drinking water supplies, ecosystems and a risk to human life. These extremes are a manifestation of changes in convectively driven precipitation, which dominates across Africa. However, despite their importance, our understanding of how the properties of convective storms will change in future is limited. This is in part due to the relatively coarse resolution of traditional climate models, which provide a simplified representation of convection. With increases in supercomputing power, we are now able to run very high resolution (km-scale) models that give a much better representation of convection and individual storms. The first so called 'convection permitting' climate simulation for Africa (CP4A) was carried out as part of the IMPALA project [2] and provided new insights into future changes across Africa. For example, it showed enhanced increases in both wet and dry precipitation extremes [3], of key importance for impacts.