Analyses of Heatwaves in Observational and Modelled Data for Africa

The WASCAL WRAP2.0 project LANDSURF aims to calculate and compare different climatological and agrometeorological indices to support stakeholders and farmers in adapting to climate change and its impact in Africa.This study, which was conducted in the framework of LANDSURF, focuses on the number and duration of heatwaves as rising temperature and resulting heat were found to limit crop yield and thus lower food security in different African regions. We calculated the heat wave duration index (HWDI) for reanalysis data, three regional climate models (RCMs) (REMO2015, RegCM4-7, and CCLM5-0-15) from CORDEX CORE, and their respective forcing data to validate the models over a historical climatological period (1981-2010) and investigate the change of the HWDI for three climatologies of the near-, mid-, and long-term future until 2100 using the two Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) 2.6 and 8.5.