Streamflow response to climate change in the Greater Horn of Africa

Authors: Feyera A. Hirpa, Lorenzo Alfieri, Thomas Lees, Jian Peng, Ellen Dyer, Simon J. Dadson.

The Greater Horn of Africa region increasingly experiences high risk of water scarcity. A combination of frequent droughts, rapid population growth and rising urbanisation has reduced streamflow and intensified water abstraction, causing water and food shortages. Estimates of future streamflow changes in the region have so far been highly uncertain and evaluations using ground-based measurements are still limited. Here, future streamflow changes are estimated using a distributed hydrological model forced with an ensemble of high-resolution climate simulations produced using the European community Earth-System Model v3.1.

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