Multiscale investigation of precipitation extremes over Ethiopia and teleconnections to large-scale climate anomalies

Abstract

Ethiopia witnessed tremendous precipitation variability and extremes linked with large-scale climate anomalies. This study investigated the long-term spatiotemporal trends of precipitation extremes, significant change points, and its teleconnection to climate anomalies. We used a daily CHIRPS gridded precipitation dataset of the past four decades covering from 1981 to 2019. Eight extreme precipitation indices are defined here based on Expert Team on Climate Change Detection and Indices guidelines. We used the Mann–Kendall test, Sen's slope estimator, and Pettitt's test to investigate trends of the precipitation change in terms of the magnitude and change point of time series. Wavelet coherence and correlation coefficient are used to identify the relationship between precipitation extremes and climate indices. Our results show a significantly decreasing trend for the Kiremt season (June to Sept) and Belg season (Feb to May) over southeast Ethiopia. The majority of grid points experience a change in time series during 1990 to 2012. Most precipitation extreme indices show an increasing trend over the south and southwest region, except consecutive wet days (CWD), which shows a decreasing trend at similar locations. The multiscale analysis presents strong coherence between precipitation anomaly and Nino 3.4 and IOD over the south and southeast region. Similarly, spatial correlation shows that IOD and Nino 3.4 are positively correlated to R10mm, R25mm, PRCTOT, Rx5day, R95ptot, and R99ptot over south, southwest, and southeast parts of the country. A negative correlation is observed with CDD for similar locations along with NAO climate index for most precipitation extremes. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.