Changing Precipitation Patterns in Sub-Saharan Africa: Climate Change and its Impacts on Ecosystems and Economies

For decades, international scientific organizations like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have concluded that human activity, such as deforestation and carbon emissions, are causing the Earth's climate to change. Many climate models show that one of the most robust responses to climate change are regional changes to the hydrological cycle which includes precipitation and evaporation. These changes include increases in droughts, extreme precipitation events, precipitation variability, and floods. These impacts are not expected to occur uniformly in space and time; Sub-Saharan Africa is generally agreed upon as one of the regions most vulnerable to such impacts, as well as one of the most understudied. This study aims to investigate spatial changes in precipitation that can be expected in the region by the end of the century (2071-2100) using observational data from the Global Precipitation Climatology Centre (GPCC), and simulations from the Community Earth System Model version 2 (CESM2) Our research includes examination of observed trends, a comparison between the model and observations, and predictions about future precipitation changes under two different Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP's). Our research showed that CESM2 was effective at simulating precipitation trends that were comparable to observations, with realistic predictions of precipitation over continents and good accountability for seasonality. Additionally, CESM2 showed that different parts of the continent could become drier, wetter, or remain the same, under both SSPs, and we identify some of the implications that these changes could have on those who live there, such as increasing food insecurity and poverty.