State of the Climate in Africa 2020

The global climate system is complex.

In order to unpack such complexity, the WMO State of the Global Climate uses Climate Indicators to describe the changing climate—providing a broad view of the climate at a global and regional scale. They are used to monitor the domains most relevant to climate change, including the composition of the atmosphere, the energy changes that arise from the accumulation of greenhouse gases and other factors, as well as the responses of land, oceans and ice. The following site aims to provide an overview of the State of the African Climate report for 2020. For more information and further detail, please find the full report at the the bottom of the page.

The Global Context

The State of the Climate in Africa

Changes in glacier area on Mt Kenya, Rwenzori and Kilimanjaro.  Bold numbers depict the mean annual area change during the marked and the previous survey year. Source: Mölg et al. 2013.

Brown areas indicate abnormally low precipitation totals (light brown indicates the lowest 20% and dark brown indicates the lowest 10% of the observed totals). Green areas indicate unusually high precipitation totals (light green indicates the highest 20% and dark green indicates the highest 10% of the observed totals).

Impacts

Sub-Saharan Africa: Annual impacts of natural disasters by country, 2000-2018. Sources: Centre for Research on Epidemiology of Disasters, Emergency Event Database; and IMF calculations. Note: Actual damages are likely higher as some disasters are missing data on damage. SSA: Sub-Saharan Africa.

Policy

© World Meteorological Organization, 2021

WMO uses datasets developed and maintained by the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and the United Kingdom’s Met Office Hadley Centre and the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit in the United Kingdom.

It also uses reanalysis datasets from the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasts and its Copernicus Climate Change Service, and the Japan Meteorological Agency. This method combines millions of meteorological and marine observations, including from satellites, with models to produce a complete reanalysis of the atmosphere. The combination of observations with models makes it possible to estimate temperatures at any time and in any place across the globe, even in data-sparse areas such as the polar regions.

Internationally recognized datasets are used for all other key climate indicators. Full details are available in the report.

Videos

UK Met Office, FAO

Data visualization

Claire Ransom

Content Contributors

ACMAD, Anny Cazenave, John Kennedy, Rainer Prinz

Changes in glacier area on Mt Kenya, Rwenzori and Kilimanjaro.  Bold numbers depict the mean annual area change during the marked and the previous survey year. Source: Mölg et al. 2013.

Brown areas indicate abnormally low precipitation totals (light brown indicates the lowest 20% and dark brown indicates the lowest 10% of the observed totals). Green areas indicate unusually high precipitation totals (light green indicates the highest 20% and dark green indicates the highest 10% of the observed totals).

Sub-Saharan Africa: Annual impacts of natural disasters by country, 2000-2018. Sources: Centre for Research on Epidemiology of Disasters, Emergency Event Database; and IMF calculations. Note: Actual damages are likely higher as some disasters are missing data on damage. SSA: Sub-Saharan Africa.