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Data regarding extreme climates and their characteristics are essential to identify, plan, implement, monitor, and evaluate different socioeconomic activities in developing economies such as Ethiopia. Temperature and rainfall are the two most significant and sensitive climatic elements in tropical regions. Following the IPCC definition, in this study, an “extreme event” is used to illustrate the occurrence of a value of a weather or climate variable above or below a threshold value, generally occurring at the tails of the probability density function (PDF) of the range of observed values of the variable within a defined climate reference period. Furthermore, extreme events affect the ecosystems much more than changes in the mean climate. This is because climate extremes respond more sensitively to climate change than changes in the average climates. Owing to the high probability of changes in climate extremes and the negative economic, social, and environmental impacts, due consideration has been given to the analysis of climate extreme events in recent years. Moreover, it is projected that Ethiopia will face serious and damaging impacts resulting from changing climate patterns in the future. Very recently, the 2015 El Niño-induced drought has caused food insecurity among 10.2 million people, one of the highest on the record.
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Ethiopia also experienced 12 major droughts between 19 that claimed the lives of over 400,000 people, and the number of those affected was over 54 million. It has experienced droughts and floods from the 1980s onwards, and since 1990, the country has recorded 47 major floods that killed about 2,000 people and affected close to 2.2 million people. The country largely suffers from hazards linked to high rainfall variability and climate extreme events. ĭue to the adverse effects of climate variability and change, Ethiopia is considered to be one of the most vulnerable countries. Climate models have shown that climate impacts will be severe in many areas of Africa, including East Africa, primarily associated with changes in atmospheric forcing due to anthropogenic causes. Furthermore, the IPCC reports illustrate that the intensity and occurrence of extreme events are expected to increase in different parts of Africa. With a projected 3 to 4☌ temperature increase, climate change impact in the future will result in more hostile environments, associated with increases in the frequency and severity of floods and droughts. Climate change impacts, however, are differently experienced in different parts of the world owing to various geographic settings and socioeconomic factors. Various studies have shown changes in the occurrence and severity of climate extreme events, along with the variability of weather patterns, causing substantial impacts on human and natural systems. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report shows that climate change is evident by high frequency in climate extreme events including flooding, drought, sea level rise, and heat waves. Overall, it is observed that warm extremes are increasing while cold extremes are decreasing, suggesting considerable changes in the AEZs. On the contrary, the number of very wet days revealed a positive trend both in the midland and highland AEZs ( ). A decreasing trend in the cold spell duration indicator was observed in all AEZs, and the magnitude of change is 0.667 days/year in lowland ( ), 2.259 days/year in midland, and 1 day/year in highland ( ). The trend in the daily temperature range shows statistically significant decrease across AEZs ( ). Temperature extreme’s magnitude of change is higher in the highland AEZ and lower in the midland AEZ.
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Over three decades, warmest days, warmest nights, and coldest nights have shown significantly increasing trends except in the midland AEZ where warmest days decreased by 0.017☌/year ( ). All agroecological zones (AEZs) have experienced both positive and negative trends of change in temperature extremes. Nonparametric Sen’s slope estimator and Mann–Kendall’s trend tests are used to detect the magnitude and statistical significance of changes in extreme climate, respectively. The indices are applied to daily temperature and precipitation data. The study aims to assess trends in extremes of surface temperature and precipitation through the application of the World Meteorological Organization’s (WMO) Expert Team on Climate Change Detection and Indices (ETCCDI) on datasets representing three agroecological zones in Southern Ethiopia.