Climate Change in Central Africa

I already pointed out that climate change is on of the biggest drivers for drying the lake. But what is actually going to happen? How will the climate and hence the water availability change in this particular region? And how will this affect the life of the local people?

Figure 12: IPCC 5, 2014

In general, through the effects of climate change the temperature will rise. It depends which scenario we choose how strong the increase will be. According to the figure above, the change could be between 2-4 degrees Celsius. Which is by the way the main goal of the COP21, happening at the moment in Paris. Therefore, 2 degrees Celsius is still quite optimistically.

How does the increasing temperature influence the water resources?

The main problem is, with an increasing temperature, the evaporation will increase as well. The consequences would be more loses of surface water and an enhanced drying of the lake. (IPCC 5, 2014)

By implication, a higher evaporation should lead to more rain. And as you can see in the next figure, according to the IPCC 5 (2014) there could be even an increase from up to 10% in rainfall, which could compensate the higher evaporation.

Figure 13: IPCC 5, 2014

The same is stressed in de Witt et al. (2006), where he shows again a possible future increase in precipitation in the area around lake Chad.

Figure 14: de Witt et al. (2006)

Therefore, climate change could bring more water into the region. It not just a threat, but maybe an opportunity to preserve the drying of the lake as well. Unfortunately there are no concrete calculations which climate change effect will be greater. For this reason, the last statement concerning opportunities should be viewed carefully.

In addition, the hydrological variability is expected to increase. This means heavier rainfall events but longer drying periods. The increased variability means the most important threat to these regions, because it is more difficult to adapt on less predictable weather events. Therefore, the focus of future water management strategies should be concentrating on a possible adaption to the variability. (Taylor et al. 2009)