Severity of Compound Precipitation and Temperature Extreme Events Over Africa at 1.5°C and 2°C Global Warming Levels

ABSTRACT Understanding the impacts of global warming through the prism of the Paris Agreements would be particularly relevant for African countries, which are most exposed to severe natural hazards that contribute to limiting their adaptive capacity. This study explores the response of increasing global warming levels (GWLs) on the variability of dry and warm as well as wet and warm modes of compound precipitation and temperature extreme events over Africa. This was achieved by using data from an ensemble mean of high‐resolution regional climate model (RCM) simulations from the Coordinated Output for Regional Evaluations (CORE) embedded in the COordinated Regional Climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX‐CORE), under the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) scenario RCP8.5. Results show that a 0.5°C increase in global warming (i.e., an increase in GWLs from 1.5°C to 2°C) is likely to induce on the one hand a 3‐fold increase in the frequency of occurrence of these compound modes, and on the other hand a 2‐fold increase in their duration, over countries located around the Equator. Moreover, a significant increase of approximately up to 13% in the area extent affected by these compound events occurs over West, Central, South‐West and South‐East Africa. These results indicate that countries located in the above subregions would experience more severe droughts over larger areas, due to the combined effect of reduced precipitation and warmer temperatures. Consequently, climate measures are needed to mitigate emissions and develop adaptation strategies to reduce potential risks to sensitive socio‐economic sectors such as agriculture, hydropower generation, livestock and public health.