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Since 1990 carbon dioxide emissions in Africa have increased by about 50%. The total carbon dioxide emissions of the entire African continent are not, however, anywhere near those of countries such as India or China. Yet certain African countries have per capita emissions comparable to some European countries. What is the outlook for Africa? How should African countries respond as it becomes increasingly likely that climate change is occurring? Increased industrial growth and more foreign investment in Africa, especially in countries that are politically and economically stable, have led to huge commercial developments such as the In Salah gas project in Algeria, which releases more than a million tons of carbon dioxide annually; and synthetic fuel plants and power stations in South Africa that generate more than 350 million tons per year. In this perspective should some African countries be required to limit greenhouse gas emissions or should they be immune to 'environmental taxation'? This paper critically reviews the carbon dioxide problem in some parts of Africa and its role in climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding different adaptive capacities is a prerequisite for targeting interventions to reduce the adverse impacts of climate change. Indicators and indices are common tools in this process, but their construction embodies many uncertainties, not least of which is their scale specificity. This paper describes the development of two empirical adaptive capacity indices for use at different scales of analysis: a national index for cross-country comparison in Africa and a household index for cross-household comparison in a village in Limpopo province, South Africa. Explaining the decisions made at each stage of construction illuminates the degree of uncertainty involved when assessing adaptive capacity, and how this uncertainty is compounded when looking across different scales of analysis. It concludes that the central elements of adaptive capacity, based on institutional collective response and the availability of and access to resources, are common at different scales, although the structure of each index is scale-specific. Hence the findings of these apparently irreconcilable scales of analysis converge to demonstrate points of leverage for policy intervention to raise resilience and the capacity to adapt to the risks posed by climate change. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The North African Coastal Low-Level Jet (NACLLJ) is a semi-permanent feature offshore the north western African coast, linked to the cold nearshore upwelling of the Canary Eastern Boundary Current system. Its main synoptic drivers are the Azores Anticyclone over the ocean and the inland Sahara thermal low. The coastal jet events occur in one of the world's most productive fisheries region, thus the evaluation of the effects of global warming in its properties is imperative. This study proposes an analysis of the annual and intra-annual attributes of the NACLLJ for two time periods 1976–2005 (historical) and 2070–2199 (future), resorting to coupled and uncoupled atmosphere–ocean simulations with the ROM model, as well as near surface offshore wind speed from the CORDEX-Africa ensemble. The future simulations follow the RCP8.5 greenhouse gas emissions scenario. Overall, the ROM coupled simulation presents the best performance in reproducing the present-climate near surface wind speed, offshore northwest Africa, compared to the remaining RCM simulations. The higher SST resolution in the coupled simulations favours much localised colder upwelling strips near the coast and consequently stronger jets. In future climate, a small increase in the surface wind speed is projected, mainly linked to the regions of coastal jet presence. The NACLLJ is projected to be more frequent and intense, encompassing larger areas. An increase of the jet seasonal frequencies of occurrence is projected for all seasons, which is larger from spring to autumn (up to 15, 16 and 22% more frequent, respectively). However, in some offshore areas the winter NACLLJ persistency is likely to double, relatively to present-climate. Higher inter-annual variability is also projected for the future NACLLJ seasonal frequencies. The strengthening of the coastal jet speeds is also significant, between 5 and 12% in all seasons. Additionally, the jet's diurnal cycle shows an increase in jet occurrence across the day, particularly in the mid and late afternoon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND: Climate change is expected to have large impacts on health at low latitudes where droughts and malnutrition, diarrhea, and malaria are projected to increase OBJECTIVES: The main objective of this study was to indicate a method to assess a range of plausible health impacts of climate change while handling uncertainties in a unambiguous manner. We illustrate this method by quantifying the impacts of projected regional warming on diarrhea in this century. METHODS: We combined a range of linear regression coefficients to compute projections of future climate change-induced increases in diarrhea using the results from five empirical studies and a 19-member climate model ensemble for which future greenhouse gas emissions were prescribed. Six geographical regions were analyzed. RESULTS: The model ensemble projected temperature increases of up to 4°C over land in the tropics and subtropics by the end of this century. The associated mean projected increases of relative risk of diarrhea in the six study regions were 8-11% (with SDs of 3-5%) by 2010-2039 and 22-29% (SDs of 9-12%) by 2070-2099. CONCLUSIONS: Even our most conservative estimates indicate substantial impacts from climate change on the incidence of diarrhea. Nevertheless, our main conclusion is that large uncertainties are associated with future projections of diarrhea and climate change. We believe that these uncertainties can be attributed primarily to the sparsity of empirical climate-health data. Our results therefore highlight the need for empirical data in the cross section between climate and human health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines why Africa's climate change burden is greater than other countries, despite Africa's least contribution to global warming. The critical challenge in terms of climate change in Africa is the way that multiple stressors, such as the spread of AIDS, the effects of economic globalization, the privatization of resources, and conflict, converge with climate change. It is where several stressors reinforce each other that societies become vulnerable, and impacts of climate change can be particularly severe.