East Africa: Too soon to blame climate change for drought

As parts of the Horn of Africa experience their driest periods in 60 years, pushing the numbers needing aid to beyond 10 million, some have been quick to blame climate change. But no single event can be attributed to climate change, which involves long-term (decades or longer) trends in climate variability. There is, however, consensus in attributing the drought to the particularly strong La Niña event. The impact of climate change on the intensity and frequency of La Niña and El Niño in future is a big unknown. Philip Thornton, a senior scientist who works part-time with the Nairobi-based International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and the University of Edinburgh-based Institute of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences, told IRIN via email that projections of the climate-change impact in East Africa were 'a problem' as the authoritative Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fourth Assessment Report 'indicated that there was good consensus among the climate models that rainfall was likely to increase during the current century'.