ABSTRACT
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports on climate change, Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) is highly vulnerable (IPCC 2001; 2007; 2012). Adverse climate effects in this region include hydrologic stresses, temperature increase and sea level rise. The changes are expected during this century, and some of them, for example increased temperature, have already been observed (IPCC 2007: 444–451). However, major gaps remain in the study of CC in Africa: this recent field of research suffers from a lack of qualitative and quantitative data, for example SSA only has one eighth of the number of meteorological stations recommended by the World Meteorological Organisation and many established installations are not functional (Hellmuth et al. 2007: 10). As a consequence, current and future CC impacts have not been precisely assessed yet; the distinction between CC – referring to long-term trends in temperature or rainfall – and climate variability – referring to trends in the shorter term (ibid.: 4–5) – sometimes remains unclear.
