Regional climate model performance in the Lake Victoria basin

Early warnings of hazardous thunderstorms over Lake Victoria

“…In contrast to the diurnal cycle observed over the surrounding land, convective activity over Lake Victoria peaks at night while being suppressed during daytime (figures 1(a)-(c); supplementary figure 1 stacks.iop.org/ERL/12/ 074012/mmedia). This distinct pattern arises from the lake/land breeze system which induces near-surface divergence during daytime and convergence at night, as well as from sustained evaporation over the lake surface and from anabatic/katabatic flows originating on the mountain slopes east of the lake (Song et al 2004, Anyah et al 2006, Williams et al 2015, Thiery et al 2015. Similar patterns are found for the other African Great Lakes, each time modulated by local orography (Thiery et al 2015).…”

An ensemble climate projection for Africa

“…There is also a decrease in precipitation over Lake Victoria, particularly from March through to November. However, as we noted earlier, there was also a strong positive precipitation bias over the lake, which needs to be further understood before interpreting the precipitation projection in this location and which has been addressed in a separate publication (Williams et al 2014). Fig.…”

“…We have investigated the case of Lake Victoria in detail and found the precipitation in the short rains to be significantly over-estimated over Lake Victoria in the RCMs both with respect to the CMAP data and CPC-FEWS data shown here and CRU and GPCP (not shown). As it is explained in a separate paper (Williams et al 2014) this issue appears to be very localised to the lake itself and therefore of little relevance to the land outside the Lake Victoria basin.…”

Patterns of Dekadal Rainfall Variation Over a Selected Region in Lake Victoria Basin, Uganda

“…Geographically, Lake Victoria spans latitudes 0.33 • N-3 • S and longitudes 31.67 • E-34.88 • E [4,6] and is the second largest lake in the world [10]. The LVB experiences annual rainfall of about 1200 mm throughout the year [5,10] generally distributed into two distinct rainfall seasons (Figure 1b,c). These seasons are March-April-May (MAM) and September-October-November (SON) , which coincide with the seasonal migration of the ITCZ.…”