Study of atmosphere/ocean climate variability and climate change effects on the glacier-covered mountains of Africa

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Thomas Mölg
• Subject Area: Physical Geography
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 566672199

The climate of Equatorial East Africa (EEA) is shaped by a complex interplay of climatic drivers, and the associated regional climate variability and climate change have a profound impact on the livelihood of people. In the regional climate system, the three high mountains Kilimanjaro, Mount Kenya and Rwenzori are a unique climatic phenomenon due to their (small, but still existent) glacier cover in the summit zones. Although the climatic drivers of the local mountain climates can be expected to differ due to the locations (e.g., Rwenzori stands much further away from the Indian Ocean coast and is under the influence of Central Africa's rainforest climate), a puzzling fact is the observation of a very similar glacier shrinkage in all three mountains since ~1900, including the most recent decades of the 21st century. As the climates of these high mountains and their glaciers have only been studied individually (most extensively for Kilimanjaro), the holistic understanding of how the "glacier mountain" subsystem functions in the context of EEA’s climate remains vague. --- The present project has the objective to study the climatic drivers of the three glaciated mountains of EEA on a new level of process-understanding, using a consistent methodology. This methodology is based on regional climate modelling with a very high resolution in space, which ensures a correct representation of the three high mountains in the model world; available observations, including in-situ meteorological data collected at high altitude in all three mountains, allow us to evaluate the modelling comprehensively. The focus will be on climatic drivers like El Niño Southern Oscillation, Indian Ocean Dipole Mode, Madden-Julian Oscillation, and sea-surface temperature in the West Indian Ocean as a source of regional climate change – all with a special eye on similarities, and differences, in their effects on the three local climates of the glacier-covered mountains of EEA. The expected results will add an important knowledge block to the climatology of tropical Africa, and widen our knowledge of multiscale processes that shape high-mountain climates and, associated, of surface-troposphere interactions.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants