Rainfall conditions in equatorial East Africa during the nineteenth century as inferred from the record of Lake Victoria

The East African lakes have exhibited dramatic fluctuations on both histori cal and paleo-climatic time scales. Levels of these lakes, and other histor ical indicators in Africa, suggested that environmental conditions in the n ineteenth century were much more extreme than anything evident in the moder n record. In this study, a water balance model is used to estimate the rain fall associated with these conditions, based on the Lake Victoria record. T he results suggest that the conditions were not unlike anomalous periods fo und during the twentieth century, but they may have persisted for somewhat longer periods of time. The paper also demonstrates a generic tool that can be applied to interpreting historical and paleo-lake levels in quantitativ e terms of rainfall.