Water scarcity, or a deficit in the amount of water available to humans, impacts many critical sectors of society including water supply, food security, land use, hydro-electric energy, and health. Prolonged periods of extreme water scarcity induced by drought are detrimental to regional economies through crop and livestock loss. This threatens food security in rural communities, and makes politically unstable regions more vulnerable to conflict, terrorism, and mass migration, with far-reaching impacts on society and the environment. The drylands of the Horn of Africa region depend on seasonal rainfall to sustain subsistence (primarily rainfed) agriculture, so they are extremely vulnerable to water scarcity and food insecurity, with associated economic losses during drought conditions when the rains are well below average. These rural communities of Horn of Africa Drylands (HAD), tend to have low socio-economic levels, and low adaptive capacity to climatic shocks, such that recent severe droughts have dramatically increased food insecurity. Despite the proliferation of improved climate information for the region, and resulting improvements in early warnings, major uncertainties remain about the links between key seasonal climate variables and water scarcity, and the consequential impacts to livelihoods and wellbeing.
A major challenge in HAD is to improve understanding of the spatiotemporal distribution of future risks to rural communities that arise from water scarcity and food insecurity under climate change, and to support these communities in co-developing climate services, strategies, and policies for climate adaptation and resilience. We are analyzing a wide range of historical information and future climate projections, creating new decision-support modeling tools to explore the impact of climate on water resources, and developing new solutions for communicating information to multiple audiences, all with strong end-user participation for improving rural livelihoods and engender more societal resilience in this region.
Projects on this research theme include:
DOWN2EARTH: Translation of climate information into multilevel decision support for social adaptation, policy development, and resilience to water scarcity in the Horn of Africa Drylands. Funded by EU Horizon 2020 - Research and Innovation Action, M. Singer (PI), with 14 institutional partners from 8 countries, 2020-2025
Drought Resilience In East African dryland Regions (DRIER). Funded by The Royal Society, K. Michaelides, M. Singer (co-PI), M. Assen, O. Wasonga, M. Cuthbert, D. Mitchell, R. Rosolem, M. Tebboth, R. Few, 2019-2023
Mobile phone App Development for Drought Adaptation in Drylands (MADDAD). Funded by UK Research and Innovation Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF), K. Michaelides, C. Preist, D. Schien, M. Singer (co-PI), M. Cuthbert, D. Mitchell, R. Rosolem, T. Waema, A. Wausi, 2019-2021
Publications on this research theme include:
*Kipkemoi, I., Michaelides, K., Singer, M.B., Rosolem, R. (In Preparation); Climatic expression of rainfall on soil moisture dynamics in drylands
*Rigby, J. M., & Preist, C. (2023). Towards User-Centred Climate Services: the Role of Human-Computer Interaction. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Hamburg, Germany. doi:10.1145/3544548.3580663. pdf
*Koppa, A., *Keune, J., *MacLeod, D.A., Singer, M.B., Nietod, R., Gimeno, L., Michaelides, K., Rosolem, R., Otieno, G., Tadege, A., Miralles, D.G. (2023); A Lagrangian analysis of the sources of rainfall over the Horn of Africa Drylands, Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres, 128(12), e2022JD038408, doi:10.1029/2022JD038408. pdf
*MacLeod, D.A., *Quichimbo, E.A., Michaelides, K., *Asfaw, D.T., Rosolem, R., Cuthbert, M.O., Otenyo, E., Segele, Z., *Rigby, J.M., Otieno, G., Hassaballah, K., Tadege, A., Singer, M.B. (2023); Translating seasonal climate forecasts into water balance forecasts for decision making, PLOS Climate, 2(3):e0000138, doi: 10.1371/journal.pclm.0000138. pdf
*Asfaw, D.T., Singer, M.B., Rosolem, R., Cuthbert, M.O., *Quichimbo, E.A., *MacLeod, D.A., *Rios Gaona, M.F., Michaelides, K. (2023); StoPET v1.0: A stochastic potential evapotranspiration generator for simulation of climate change impacts, Geoscientific Model Development, 16(2), 557-571. doi:10.5194/gmd-16-557-2023. pdf
Deman, V.M.H., Koppa, A., Waegeman, W., *MacLeod, D.A., Singer, M.B., Miralles, D.G. (2022); Seasonal prediction of Horn of Africa long rains using machine learning: The pitfalls of preselecting correlated predictors, Frontiers in Water, Vol. 4, doi:10.3389/frwa.2022.1053020. pdf
*Adloff, M., Singer, M.B., *MacLeod, D.A., Michaelides, K., *Mehrnegar, N., Hansford, E., Funk, C., Mitchell, D. (2022); Sustained water storage in East African drylands dominated by seasonal rainfall extremes, Geophysical Research Letters, 49(21):e2022GL099299, doi:10.1029/2022GL099299. pdf.
*Rigby, J.M., Yohannis, A., Preist, C., Singer, M.B., Waema, T., Wausi, A., Michaelides, K. (2022); Climate services for the Greater Horn of Africa: Interviews exploring practitioner perspectives from Kenya and beyond, Climate and Development, 1-13, doi:10.1080/17565529.2022.2074350. pdf.
*Quichimbo, E.A., Singer, M.B., Michaelides, K., Hobley, D., Rosolem, R., Cuthbert, M.O. (2021). DRYP 1.0: A parsimonious hydrological model of DRYland Partitioning of the water balance, Geoscientific Model Development, doi:10.5194/gmd-2021-137. pdf
Singer, M.B., *Asfaw, D.T., Rosolem, R., Cuthbert, M.O., *Quichimbo, A., Miralles, D.G., MacLeod, D., Michaelides, K. (2021); Hourly potential evapotranspiration at 0.1˚ grid resolution for the global land surface from 1981-present, Scientific Data, 8(224) doi:10.1038/s41597-021-01003-9. pdf
*Quichimbo, A., Singer, M.B., Cuthbert, M.O. (2020); Characterizing groundwater-surface water interactions in idealized ephemeral stream systems, Hydrological Processes, 34: 3792-3806, doi: 10.1002/hyp.13847. pdf