The Climate of Ethiopia

Several papers have been published on different issues regarding the climate of Ethiopia or of some specific region. This presentation attempts to revise the knowledge of the climate of Ethiopia by means of updated, longer time series and including a larger number of meteo-stations than previous studies. Basic climatic parameters such as temperature, rainfall, relative humidity, wind, evapotranspiration, and aridity are considered and their spatial distribution is analyzed. The main results of such elaborations have been regionalized to obtain climatic maps by means of geostatistical interpolation, also taking into account topogeographic variables. These parameters were also used to update the Köppen classification of the Ethiopian territory. Climate change is a very important issue with worrying repercussions on agriculture and hence the social and economic development of the country. Trends of temperature and annual, spring, and summer rains were interpolated for the last 3–5 decades. Temperature shows a markedly increasing trend especially as regards the minimum values, whereas annual rainfalls tend to decrease with the spring, ‘small rains’ decreasing at faster rate.