Reliability of African climate prediction and attribution across timescales

This study investigates the reliability of seasonal to multi-decadal climate simulations of the wet seasons of several key African regions. It is found that reliability varies across regions and seasons, and that simulations of precipitation are universally less reliable than simulations of temperature. Similar levels of reliability are found across all the timescales considered for most (but not all) region/season combinations. Reliability for temperatures increases on longer timescales, both due to the differences in the modelling systems for each timescale and, in part, due to the contribution from systematic climate warming. Though the use of reliability is well-established for forecasting, its meaning for attribution is less clear, and further work is underway to further clarify this.