SIMULATING DROUGHT IN SOUTHERN AFRICA USING SEA-SURFACE TEMPERATURE-VARIATIONS

Changes in atmospheric circulation that produce droughts over South Af rica are briefly reviewed, as too are the links between regions of hom ogeneous sea surface temperature variation in the oceans around Southe rn Africa and their correlation with rainfall over South Africa. There after sea surface temperature anomaly fields known to be linked to the occurrence of droughts are used to initialise the 4-level CSIRO gener al circulation climate model to simulate drought over South Africa. Mo del results are compared with previously developed hypotheses concerni ng ocean-atmosphere interactions in the region and are shown to be con sistent with observations in many important respects.