The Late Wet Season Reliably Predicts Drought In Areas Inclined To Meals Insecurity – Watts Up With That?
A new indicator could help reduce food insecurity in sub-Saharan Africa
PLOS
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PICTURE: ABOVE: WHISKER LANDS THAT DESCRIBE THE VARIABILITY OF THE CORRELATION BETWEEN THE DATE OF THE RUNNING SEASON (DATE OF APPLICATION) AND PEAK NDVI (DISPLAY OF THE DROUGHT) IN THE FOLLOWING MONTHS FOR ETC. HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY/4.0/)
The onset of the annual rainy season reliably predicts whether or not parts of sub-Saharan Africa that are particularly vulnerable to food insecurity will experience seasonal drought and could help mitigate its effects. Shraddhanand Shukla and colleagues from the University of California, the Climate Hazards Center in Santa Barbara, will present these results on January 20, 2021 in the open access journal PLOS ONE.
Seasonal drought caused by climatic conditions can affect crop yields and is a major contributor to food insecurity, which can threaten people’s lives and livelihoods. Food insecurity has increased significantly in parts of sub-Saharan Africa over the past five years, sometimes requiring emergency food aid. Early warning systems that reliably predict conditions that can lead to food insecurity could help ensure timely action to mitigate these effects.
Shukla and colleagues hypothesized that the beginning of the rainy season calculated from the precipitation data could serve as such a warning. To investigate this possibility, they analyzed the relationship between the onset of drought conditions observed via satellite imagery of vegetation cover and the risks of food insecurity based on quarterly reports on food insecurity across sub-Saharan Africa from April 2011 to February 2020.
The analysis found that a delay of around 10 days from the mean onset of the rainy season was associated with a significantly higher likelihood of seasonal drought in regions with the highest risk of acute food insecurity. A delay of 20 days indicated a 50 percent probability of drought in these regions. Further analysis confirmed the predictive relationship between the beginning of the rainy season and the risk of drought in all of sub-Saharan Africa and in particular in East Africa.
These results suggest that the onset of the rainy season could be an important part of an early warning system for droughts that can lead to food insecurity in sub-Saharan Africa. Further research could examine the relationship between onset and other indicators of food insecurity, such as high-resolution data on crop yields and prices or mid-season livestock prices.
The authors add: “The point in time when precipitation begins can be tracked with the help of remote sensing observations and forecast with the help of climate models. The results of this study show that this can be a reliable indicator of periods of agricultural drought, especially in the regions of greatest food insecurity in sub-Saharan Africa, which makes it a simple yet powerful tool to provide an effective early warning of food insecurity support and thus save life and livelihood. “
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Citation: Shukla S., Husak G., Turner W., Davenport F., Funk C., Harrison L. et al. (2021) A slow onset of the rainy season is a reliable harbinger of drought in most food insecure regions in sub-Saharan Africa. PLoS ONE 16 (1): e0242883. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0242883
Funding: SS supported by # 80NSSC18M0039 from NASA Harvest Consortium, GH, WT, LH supported by # 72DFFP19CA00001 from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Collaboration Agreement. CF Received Support from the USGS Drivers of Drought Program and NASA Precipitation Surveillance Mission grant 80NSSC19K0686, SS and FD received support from W911NF-18-1-0018 through the Army’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) World Modelers Program Research Office (ARO). FD supported by # 80NSSC20K0159 from NASA SERVIR.
Competing interests: The authors have stated that there are no competing interests.
Use this URL in your reporting to get access to the freely available article in PLOS ONE: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0242883
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