Climatic Change (2021) 169: 31

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-021-03268-w

Potential impacts of stratospheric aerosol injection

on drought risk managements over major river basins
in Africa

Babatunde J. Abiodun1 · Romaric C. Odoulami2 · Windmanagda Sawadogo3 ·

Olumuyiwa A. Oloniyo1 · Abayomi A. Abatan4 · Mark New2 · Christopher Lennard1 ·
Pinto Izidine1 · Temitope S. Egbebiyi1 · Douglas G. MacMartin5

Received: 12 June 2021 / Accepted: 10 November 2021 /Published online: 15 December 2021
© The Author(s) 2021

Abstract
Most socio-economic activities in Africa depend on the continent’s river basins, but effec-
tively managing drought risks over the basins in response to climate change remains a big
challenge. While studies have shown that the stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) inter-
vention could mitigate temperature-related climate change impacts over Africa, there is a
dearth of information on how the SAI intervention could influence drought characteris-
tics and drought risk managements over the river basins. The present study thus examines
the potential impacts of climate change and the SAI intervention on droughts and drought
management over the major river basins in Africa. Multi-ensemble climate simulation
datasets from the Stratospheric Aerosol Geoengineering Large Ensemble (GLENS) Pro-
ject were analysed for the study. The Standardized Precipitation Evapotranspiration Index
(SPEI) and the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) were used to characterize the upper
and lower limits of future drought severity, respectively, over the basins. The SPEI is a
function of rainfall and potential evapotranspiration, whereas the SPI is only a function of
rainfall, so the difference between the two indices is influenced by atmospheric evaporative
demand. The results of the study show that, while the SAI intervention, as simulated in
GLENS, may offset the impacts of climate change on temperature and atmospheric evapo-
rative demand, the level of SAI that compensates for temperature change would overcom-
pensate for the impacts on precipitation and therefore impose a climate water balance defi-
cit in the tropics. SAI would narrow the gaps between SPEI and SPI projections over the
basins by reducing SPEI drought frequency through reduced temperature and atmospheric
evaporative demand while increasing SPI drought frequency through reduced rainfall. The
narrowing of this gap lowers the level of uncertainty regarding future changes in drought
frequency, but nonetheless has implications for future drought management in the basins,
because while SAI lowers the upper limit of the future drought stress, it also raises the
lower limit of the drought stress.

Keywords Climate change · Geoengineering · Droughts · African river basin

* Babatunde J. Abiodun
[email protected]
Extended author information available on the last page of the article

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1 Introduction

Drought poses a significant threat in Africa, especially over the river basins, where it
usually stresses water resources and disrupts the socio-economic activities of the ripar-
ian countries. For instance, in 1972–1974, severe droughts devastated the economies
of many countries in West Africa (Derrick 1977), and in 1984–1985, a megadrought
killed about 450,000 people in Ethiopia (Guha-Sapir et al. 2004). The southern African
drought of the 1990s affected most river basins and countries in the region. This drought
destroyed crops in the Limpopo River basin, induced a water shortage that affected mil-
lions of people in the basin’s riparian countries (i.e. Malawi, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, and
South Africa), and disrupted socio-economic activities in these countries (Clay et al.
1995; Calow et al. 2010). More recently, a severe drought that affected the Berg and
Overberg catchments of the Western Cape in South Africa drastically reduced the dam
water level in Cape Town (Africa’s most attractive tourist city), leading to water restric-
tions for the millions of people in the city (Wolski 2018; Sousa et al. 2018; Mahla-
lela et al. 2019; Omar and Abiodun 2020; Odoulami et al. 2021). Several studies have
reported an increasing trend in drought characteristics (severity, frequency, and persis-
tence) over the last decades (Masih et al. 2014; Omar and Abiodun 2020; Spinoni et al.
2019; Padrón et al. 2020) and attributed this trend to global warming (e.g. Uhe et al.
2017; Funk et al. 2018; Bellprat et al. 2015; Pascale et al. 2020; Otto et al. 2018). These
trends may well continue into the future (Cook et al. 2020; Spinoni et al. 2020; Abiodun
et al. 2019).
The potential impacts of global warming on droughts and socio-economic activi-
ties in Africa have been discussed by several studies (e.g. Joshi et al. 2011; James and
Washington 2013; Trenberth et al. 2014). Some of these studies indicated that, although
Africa has a low level of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, the continent would experi-
ence the worst impacts of anthropogenic warming because so many African countries
are poor or ravaged by war already (e.g. Hope 2009; Verissimo 2020). Such warming
would add extra heat into the atmosphere, and most of this heat would go into dry-
ing the continent (Feddema 1999; Lian et al. 2021; Onyutha 2021). Hence, the warm-
ing would amplify the evaporative demand of the atmosphere, thus triggering natural
droughts more quickly and making such droughts more intense and longer-lasting. East
Africa and much of tropical Africa are projected to become generally wetter, but the
southern African region (particularly South Africa) is projected to become generally
drier under global warming, with an associated increase in dry spells and droughts
(Maúre et al. 2018; Abiodun et al. 2019; Dosio et al. 2019; Cook et al. 2020). Abiodun
et al. (2018) projected an increase in drought intensity and frequency over the major
river basins in southern Africa at various global warming levels. Every bit of additional
warming would pose even greater risks for Africa in the form of more potential crop
failures because the greater evaporation from the warming would reduce soil moisture
(Serdeczny et al. 2017; Shiferaw et al. 2014). This would negatively impact water avail-
ability for both crops and pastures, with a greater chance of failed harvests and reduced
livestock feeds. In addition, adequate provision of water for livestock production could
become more difficult under climate change. For example, Masike and Urich (2009)
estimated that the cost of supplying livestock water from boreholes in Botswana could
increase by 23% by 2050 due to increased hours of groundwater pumping needed to
meet livestock water demands under warmer and drier conditions. The impacts of cli-
mate change on droughts could furthermore heighten conflicts between crop farmers

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and cattle herders in the Sahel region . Hence, there is a need to mitigate the impacts of
global warming on droughts and various socio-economic activities in Africa.
Solar radiation management (SRM or solar geoengineering) has been proposed as a
quick and relatively cheap option to mitigate climate change impacts (Robock 2015; Krav-
itz et al. 2016). SRM aims to counteract GHG-driven global warming by artificially reflect-
ing a small amount of inbound sunlight out into space. One of the most prominent SRM
approaches is stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), which involves the injection of gase-
ous aerosol precursors like sulphur dioxide into the tropical stratosphere to block a small
amount of incoming solar radiation from reaching the earth’s surface and thus to reduce the
warming level around the earth’s surface (Robock 2015). Although SAI has not yet been
implemented, the temporary global cooling experienced after major volcanic eruptions
(e.g. Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991 and El Chichón in Mexico in 1982) that
released large amounts of sulphate aerosols into the stratosphere is evidence of the cooling
potential of SAI (Stenchikov et al. 1998; Hegerl et al. 2003; Proctor et al. 2018). However,
just like every geoengineering approach, the deployment of SAI requires a prior fair and
equitable evaluation of its potential to influence various components of the climate system
(NAS 2021). Although research relating to SAI is still in its infancy stages, the approach
is controversial because its full effects on different components of the earth’s systems are
unknown. There are also concerns about who will make the decision to implement SAI.
Previous studies stated that, while SAI could reduce the global temperature, it would not
restore the world’s climate to pre-global warming levels. It would also lead to additional
changes in regional precipitation (Caldeira and Wood 2008; Ricke et al. 2010; Jones et al.
2010). For example, Simpson et al. (2019) and Cheng et al. (2019) showed that SAI could
reduce precipitation (relative to the pre-global warming world) in most parts of the world,
including over the Indian summer monsoon region, most parts of Africa, Southern Amer-
ica, and the Mediterranean region (wintertime only). Although some of these studies have
confirmed the effectiveness of SAI in reducing temperatures in Africa (Pinto et al. 2020;
Da-Allada et al. 2020), there is a dearth of information on the potential impacts of SAI on
future droughts in Africa. While Odoulami et al. (2021) showed that SAI could reduce the
risk of a severe drought in Cape Town in the future, their study used only rainfall deficit
as a proxy for drought and focused only on a local scale event, making the findings loca-
tion specific. Hence, there is a need to improve knowledge on the potential impacts of SAI
on drought over Africa more generally, using appropriate drought indices to characterize
droughts.
This study thus investigates the impacts of SAI on droughts over Africa with a focus on
major river basins. The study uses two indices to identify droughts and quantify the poten-
tial impacts of SAI on the severity, frequency, and duration of such droughts. Section 2 of
the paper describes the methodology, while Section 3 presents and discusses the results,
and Section 4 provides the concluding remarks.

2 Methodology

2.1 Study domain

Our study domain is Africa but with a focus on 12 major river basins in the continent. The
locations of these basins are shown in Fig. 1, while some information about the basins is
presented in Table 1. These basins have been selected because they are the biggest and

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Fig. 1  The study domain, showing the locations of the 12 major river basins (shaded) used in the study. The
white lines on the basins show the rivers. The zones delineated as tropics (23.4° N–23.4S) and subtropics
(23.4° S–35° S and 23.3° S–35.0° N) in the study are indicated

most transboundary basins in Africa and are good representatives of other river basins over
the continent. The sizes of the basins range from 223,400 k­ m2 (Ogoose basin) to 3,699,100
­km2 (Congo basin), while the numbers of the riparian countries vary from 3 (Juba-Shibelli
basin) to 11 (Nile basin), and the populations of basin inhabitants range from 800,000 peo-
ple (Okavango) to 280,000,000 people (Nile). These twelve basins, which drive various
socio-economic activities (such as agriculture, mining, power generation, and industry) in
their riparian countries, play important roles in sustainable developments in Africa (ARBO
2007). For example, the Zambezi and the Limpopo attract tourists from around the world
to see the majestic Victoria Falls and the Big Five in the Kruger National Park. Lake Chad
basin supports the livelihood of the local community through the provision of water for
agriculture, fishing, and pasture. The Nile basin provides irrigation for more than 5.5 mil-
lion ha with the potential to expand to 10.4 million ha. The Niger basin currently supports
7,000 GWH hydropower and has the potential for 30,000 GWH. However, drought contin-
ues to fuel desertification, land degradation, poverty, and conflicts in these basins.

2.2 Data

The climate simulation datasets from the Stratospheric Aerosol Geoengineering Large
Ensemble (GLENS) Project dataset (Tilmes et al. 2018) were analysed for the study. The

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 Table 1  Description of the 12 major river basins used in the study. The number of their riparian countries is indicated in brackets
Basin name (no. of Basin area ­(km2) River length (km) Population Riparian countries
Climatic Change (2021) 169: 31

riparian countries)

Congo (9) 3,699,100 4,667 50,000,000 Congo Democratic Republic, Central African Angola, Congo Republic, Zambia, Tanzania, Cam-
eroon, Burundi, Rwanda, Gabon, Malawi
Juba-Shibelli (3) 803,600 1,658 - Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia
Lake Chad (8) 2,388,700 1,400 22,000,000 Chad, Niger, Central African Republic, Nigeria, Algeria, Sudan, Cameroon, Chad, Libya
Limpopo (4) 414,800 1,750 14,000,000 Botswana, Mozambique, South Africa, Zimbabwe
Niger (10) 2,113,350 4,200 109,000,000 Nigeria, Mali, Niger, Algeria, Guinea, Cameroon, Burkina Faso, Benin, Chad, Sierra Leone
Nile (11) 3,038,100 6,700 280,000,000 Sudan, Ethiopia, Egypt, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, Congo Democratic Republic, Rwanda, Burundi,
Eritrea
Ogoose (4) 223,400 850 - Gabon, Congo Republic, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea
Okavango (4) 725,000 1,100 800,000 Angola, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe
Orange (4) 850,000 2,300 14,100,000 Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa
Senegal (4) 490,000 1,800 3,500,000 Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Senegal
Volta (6) 414,000 1,610 14,000,000 Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Mail, Togo
Zambezi (10) 1,400,000 2,650 38,000,000 Angola, Botswana, Congo Democratic Republic, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania, Zam-
bia, Zimbabwe

ARBO (2007)

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GLENS datasets were generated with the Community Earth System Model (CESM1),
which uses the Whole Atmosphere Community Climate Model (WACCM) as its atmos-
pheric component (Mills et al. 2017). The CESM1 model data has a horizontal resolution
of 0.9° latitude × 1.25° longitude with 70 vertical levels from the surface up to 140 km
(Tilmes et al. 2018). We used two experiments from the GLENS project dataset, namely,
control and feedback experiments. In both experiments, the simulations were forced with
a high GHG emission scenario (RCP8.5), but in the feedback experiment, sulphur dioxide
was injected into the tropical stratosphere at four latitudes (i.e. 15° S, 15° N, 30° S, and 30°
N) along 180° E at roughly 6–7 km above the tropopause (Tilmes et al. 2018). The sulphate
injection is intended to maintain the global mean temperature as well as the inter-hemi-
spheric and equator-to-pole near-surface temperatures at the 2020 level until the end of
the century while keeping other forcing as in the RCP8.5 scenario. The control experment
has two datasets: baseline simulation dataset (2010–2030) and RCP8.5 simulation data-
sets (2020 – 2100). The feedback experiment has one dataset, called feedback simulation
dataset (2020 – 2100). However, while the control baseline simulation dataset (2010–2030)
and feedback simulation dataset) have twenty simulation ensemble members each, the con-
trol RCP8.5 simulation dataset) has only three simulation ensemble members. To address
this problem, we generated twenty ensemble members for the RCP8.5 simulation data-
set by duplicating the original three ensemble members. That is, in the twenty-member
ensemble, ensemble members 1, 4, 7, 10, 13, 16, and 19 are duplicates, ensemble members
2, 5, 8, 11, 14, 17, and 20 are duplicates, and ensemble members 3, 6, 9, 13, 15, and 18 are
duplicates. With this, the number of ensemble members in the RCP8.5 simulation data-
set l matches that of other two datasets. The justification for this approach is that the cli-
mate simulations are all statistically independent. The approach frees us from limiting the
analysis to only three ensemble members (which would be too few for calculating changes
in drought characteristics) or from working with unequal numbers of ensemble members.
Pinto et al. (2020) has evaluated the historical simulations of model used in the GLENS,
found that the model gives credible simulation of African climate, and shown that the
model’s perfomance compares well with other CMIP5 models.
Twenty years simulation data were analysed in each dataset. The control baseline simu-
lation dataset was used to study the characteristics of the present-day climate (2011–2030;
hereafter, PRS), the control RCP8.5 simulation dataset was used to study the characteristics
of the future climate under the RCP8.5 scenario (2071–2090; hereafter RCP8.5) while the
feedback simulation dataset was used to examine the characteristics of the future climate
under the RCP8.5 scenario with the SAI intervention (2071–2090; hereafter, SAI). We
chose the period of 2011–2030 as the present-day (or baseline) climate because this period
had been used to define the targets for SAI to keep the surface temperature at the 2020
level until the end of the century under the RCP8.5 scenario (Tilmes et al. 2018; Simpson
et al. 2019). Hence, RCP8.5 minus PRS quantifies the impacts of the RCP8.5 scenario on
the future climate, SAI minus PRS shows the combined impacts of RCP8.5 and the SAI
intervention on the future climate, and SAI minus RCP8.5 shows the impacts of SAI on the
future climate.

2.3 Methods

We used two drought indices to characterize droughts in this study, namely, the Stand-
ardized Precipitation Index (SPI; McKee et al. 1993) and the Standardized Precipitation

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Climatic Change (2021) 169: 31 Page 7 of 19 31

Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI; Vicente-Serrano et al. 2010a, b). Although there are
numerous drought indices (Svoboda and Fuchs 2016), the most used meteorological indi-
ces for water resource monitoring and management are the Palmer Drought Severity Index
(PDSI; Palmer 1965), SPI, and SPEI. We chose SPEI and SPI for two reasons. Firstly, the
SPEI and SPI calculations are much easier than the PDSI calculation. Secondly, SPEI and
SPI are multiscale drought indexes while PDSI is not. As drought is a multiscale phenom-
enon, it is essential to employ multiscale drought indices for monitoring and managing
droughts because these indices can use the timescale of accumulated water deficit to func-
tionally separate different types of droughts (e.g. hydrological, environmental, agricultural,
and other droughts) that influence water resources (Vicente-Serrano et al. 2015). For exam-
ple, on short timescales (≤ 6 months), the SPEI and SPI are closely related to soil mois-
ture, while at longer timescales (≥ 9 months), they are related to groundwater and reservoir
storage (McKee et al. 1993; Beguería et al. 2014). Both indices (i.e. SPEI and SPI) have
been used for drought identification, monitoring, and projections in Africa (e.g. Meque and
Abiodun 2015, Oguntude et al. 2018; Nguvava et al. 2019; Gore et al. 2020), as well as
elsewhere around the world (e.g. Beguería et al. 2014; Abatan et al. 2017, 2018). The SPI
is the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) adopted drought index for all national
meteorological and hydrological services worldwide (Hayes et al. 2011; WMO 2012).
However, the SPI uses only precipitation data to characterize droughts, thereby assuming
that the variability of precipitation is much higher than the variability of other variables
(e.g. temperature, evapotranspiration, wind speed, and relative humidity) that influence
droughts and that there are no trends in these other variables (Vicente-Serrano et al. 2015).
Hence, SPI may not account for the influence of global temperature increase (i.e. global
warming) on drought characteristics. To overcome this limitation, the SPEI was developed
as an extension of SPI (Vicente-Serrano et al. 2010a).
The formulations of SPI and SPEI are similar, except that SPI is based on precipitation
while SPEI is based on climate water balance (CWB), which is the difference between
precipitation (P) and potential evapotranspiration (PET) (i.e. CWB = P – PET). The SPEI
may give a more reliable measure of drought severity than SPI because, by using CWB,
SPEI characterizes droughts by comparing the available water (i.e. P) with the atmospheric
evaporative demand (i.e. PET). The notion of using actual evapotranspiration (ET, instead
of PET) in the calculation of CWB and SPEI was discussed by Beguería et al. (2014),
who argued that doing so would contradict the idea behind SPEI. The idea behind SPEI
is to obtain the highest drought stress possible, by comparing the highest possible evapo-
transpiration (i.e. atmospheric evaporative demand) with the currently available water (i.e.
precipitation). In contrast, by neglecting evapotranspiration, the SPI provides the lowest
drought stress possible. Hence, for any given atmospheric condition, SPEI can be used to
quantify the upper bound of drought severity or stress while SPI can be used to depict the
lower bound (Abiodun et al. 2019). In the present study, we used the gap between SPEI
(upper bound) and SPI (lower bound) to examine the extent to which trends in PET could
alter the characteristics of the future droughts.
We calculated the two drought indices by using the SPEI Package in the R software
(https://​cran.r-​proje​ct.​org/​web/​packa​ges/​SPEI/​SPEI.​pdf). The algorithm uses the same
procedure for calculating both indices, except that it uses precipitation as input data for
calculating SPI and CWB as input data for calculating SPEI. For SPI, the algorithm trans-
forms the precipitation data to Gaussian (normal) equivalents, which it uses to compute
the dimensionless SPI value. For SPEI, the algorithm fits the CWB data to a probability
distribution to transform the original values to standardized units. For both indices, the
standardized values are comparable in space and time and at drought timescales. A detailed

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description and equations for calculating SPI and SPEI can be obtained in McKee et al.
(1993) and Beguería et al. (2014). The PET data (for calculating CWB) were obtained
from the maximum and minimum temperature data using the Hargreaves method (Har-
greaves and Samani 1985). Both drought indices were calculated at a 12-month timescale
over the study domain and then averaged over the river basins (Fig. 1). The values of the
indices range from negative values (with <  − 2.0 denoting drought conditions) to positive
values (with > 2.0 denoting wet conditions). The focus of this study is on droughts that fall
into at least the moderate drought category (i.e. ≤  − 1.0), so we used a threshold of − 1.0 to
identify droughts in the 12-month SPEI and SPI datasets. Hence, for each drought index,
a drought event occurs when the value of the 12-month drought index is less than or equal
to the threshold (− 1.0) continuously for at least 3 months. Three drought characteristics
(duration, severity, and frequency) were extracted from the SPEI and SPI datasets. The
duration of a drought event is defined as the period (i.e. number of months) in which the
value of the drought index is continuously ≤  − 1.0 for the drought event. The severity of
a drought event is defined as the average of the absolute values of the drought index over
the drought duration. The drought frequency for a climate period is defined as the number
of drought events that occur during the 20-year long time slices. We analysed the drought
characteristics (frequency, duration, and severity) for the present-day climate (PRS) and
future climate (RCP8.5 and SAI) to examine the impacts of RCP8.5 and SAI on the drought
characteristics in the future (2071–2090) climate.

3 Results and discussion

3.1 Projected changes in mean climate variables over Africa

The potential impacts of RCP8.5 on the mean climate variables in the period (2071–2090)
vary across the African continent (Fig. 2; column 2). While the warming increases the mean
surface temperature by more than 2 °C over the entire continent, the maximum increase
(about 5 °C) is projected over northern and southern Africa and the minimum increase
(about 1 °C) over eastern Africa (Fig. 2b). In response to such warming, the atmospheric
evaporative demand (i.e. potential evapotranspiration, PET) is projected to increase over
the entire continent, with the maximum increase (up to 20 mm ­month−1) in the sub-tropics
and the minimum increase in the tropics (Fig. 2f). In contrast to the PET projection, precip-
itation is projected to increase in the tropics (up to 40 mm ­month−1 in eastern Africa) but to
decrease in the sub-tropics with the maximum decrease (about −10 mm ­month−1) in South-
ern Africa (Fig. 2j). However, in most parts of the tropics, the magnitude of the precipita-
tion increase is higher than the PET increase. Hence, a net surplus in climate water balance
(i.e. positive CWB) is projected over tropical Africa, while a net deficit (i.e. negative CWB)
is projected over rest of the continent; the maximum deficit (about −40 mm ­month−1)
occurs over Southern Africa (Fig. 2n). These projections agree with the results of previous
studies, which projected that global warming would make the wet regions of Africa wetter
and the dry regions drier (Liu and Allan 2013; Feng and Zhang 2015).
The SAI intervention reduces the impacts of RCP8.5 on the climate variables in some
cases but enhances it in others (Fig. 2d, h, l, and p). For instance, it induces cooling to
reduce the surface temperature by about 2 °C in eastern Africa and by about 4 °C in the
sub-tropics (Fig. 2d). With this, it effectively offsets the impacts of RCP8.5 warming and
keeps the future temperature changes to within ± 0.5 °C everywhere over the continent

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Climatic Change (2021) 169: 31 Page 9 of 19 31

Fig. 2  The spatial distribution of climate variables (temperature [TEMP], potential evapotranspira-
tion [PET], precipitation [PRE] and climate water balance [CWB]) over Africa in the present-day climate
(PRS; 2011–2030) and their projected future changes in the period (2071–2090) under the RCP8.5 scenario
without and with SAI (RCP8.5 minus PRS and SAI minus PRS, respectively). The extent to which the SAI
influences the impacts of global warming on the variables is presented (SAI minus RCP8.5). Brown colour
indicates dry tendency, while purple colour indicates wet tendency. The cross sign ( +) indicates where at
least 75% of the simulations agree on the sign of the changes

(Fig. 2c). It also offsets the increased PET (due to the RCP8.5 warming), with a less than
5 mm ­month−1 decrease in the tropics and a more than 20 mm ­month−1 decrease in the
sub-tropics relative to RCP8.5 (Fig. 2h). This in turn keeps the change in atmospheric
water demand to within ± 5 mm ­month−1 relative to PRS over the continent (Fig. 2h).
SAI reduces precipitation with reference to RCP8.5. It reverses the RCP8.5 wetting in the
tropics, where it reduces precipitation by more than 20 mm ­month−1 (relative to RCP8.5),
with the maximum decrease (> 40 mm ­month−1, relative to RCP8.5) occurring over east-
ern Africa (Fig. 2l). With reference to PRS, SAI leads to a net precipitation decrease of
about 10 mm ­month−1 over most parts of sub-Saharan Africa and a decrease of more than
20 mm ­month−1 over eastern Africa (Fig. 2k). These results are consistent with the findings
of Cheng et al. (2019). However, as the SAI intervention reverses the impacts of RCP8.5
on temperature, it induces a net CWB deficit over most parts of Africa (relative to PRS;
Fig. 2o) because it decreases precipitation more than it decreases PET (cp. Figure 2l and
k). The maximum CWB deficit is projected over eastern Africa (Fig. 2p). Hence, while the
SAI intervention may reduce the CWB deficit over South Africa, it may impose a CWB
deficit over east African countries, where a surplus CWB is projected without this inter-
vention (Fig. 2p). Results of previous SAI studies suggest that the CWB deficit in the trop-
ics can be avoided by using a moderate amount of SAI, which would only offset the impact

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Fig. 3  Same as Fig. 2, but for SPEI drought characteristics (frequency, duration, and severity)

of RCP8.5 on precipitation. However, this would result in a higher residual of warming,

which may be up to 1.75 °C (Ferraro et al. 2014; MacMartin et al. 2019, Irvine and Keith
2020).

3.2 Projected changes in drought characteristics over Africa

The impacts of RCP8.5 on droughts over Africa depend on the drought indices (SPEI or
SPI) used for the projection (Figs. 3 and 4). With the RCP8.5, the SPEI drought charac-
teristics (frequency, duration, and severity) are projected to decrease over eastern Africa,
but to increase elsewhere over the continent, with the maximum increase over southern
Africa (south of 10° S) (Fig. 3b, f, and j). In contrast, a decrease in SPI drought char-
acteristics is projected over the whole of tropical Africa (except over the DRC) and over
some parts of South Africa (Fig. 4b, f, and j). While a decrease in drought frequency is
projected over eastern Africa, the magnitude of the decrease is higher for SPI ( > 5 drought
events ­decade−1) than for SPEI ( < 5 drought events ­decade−1). Additionally, with refer-
ence to PRS, while an increase in drought duration is indicated for both indices over south-
ern Africa, the magnitude of the increase is more pronounced for SPEI ( > 3 months ) than
for SPI (< 3 months). The SPEI and CWB are driven by precipitation and evapotranspira-
tion, and SPI is driven by precipitation (Fig. 3). These results are consistent with previous
studies (e.g. Abiodun et al. 2018; Nguvava et al. 2019), which associated the difference
between the two projections with the increase in atmospheric evaporative demand due to
RCP8.5 warming.
The impacts of the SAI intervention on droughts also depend on the drought indices
used. With SPEI, in reference to RCP8.5, the SAI increases the drought characteristics
(frequency, duration, and intensity) over the entire tropical African region (except over

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Climatic Change (2021) 169: 31 Page 11 of 19 31

Fig. 4  Same as Fig. 2, but for SPI drought characteristics (frequency, duration, and severity)

Congo) (Fig. 3d, h, and l) but lowers them over sub-tropical regions. Conversely, with SPI,
the SAI increases the drought characteristics over most parts of the continent (except over
Congo, along the southeastern coast of South Africa, and over southwestern South Africa).
Although the SAI enhances both SPEI and SPI droughts over the tropics, the magnitude of
this enhancement is higher for SPI droughts than for SPEI droughts. Nevertheless, in refer-
ence to PRS, both SPEI and SPI projections agree that the SAI intervention would lead to a
net increase in drought characteristics over most parts of the continent, including over east-
ern Africa, where a decrease in drought characteristics is projected without the SAI inter-
vention. These changes are consistent with the impacts of SAI on precipitation and CWB
projection (Fig. 2). These results are based on a scenario where SAI offsets all the change
in global mean temperature relative to the baseline 2020 conditions. If less SAI were used,
the impacts of SAI intervention on the drought indices could be proportionally reduced.

3.3 Projected changes in drought characteristics over the major river basin

Figure 5 compares the impacts of RCP8.5 and the SAI intervention on SPEI and SPI
droughts over the selected river basins. With RCP8.5, some basins feature an increase
in both SPEI and SPI droughts, while some feature an increase in SPEI drought with
a decrease in SPI droughts (Fig. 5a, d, and g). Only one basin (i.e. the Volta basin)
features a decrease in both SPEI and SPI droughts. Regardless of the direction of the
changes, all the basins show a gap between the SPEI and SPI projections, with the
SPEI projection indicating more droughts than the SPI projection. The size of the gap,
which indicates the extent to which the increase in PET could alter future droughts,
varies over the basins. While the gap is relatively small over some basins (e.g. the Nile
and Zambezi basins), it is relatively very large over some basins (i.e. the Chad and

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Fig. 5  Projected changes in characteristics of SPI and SPEI moderate droughts (i.e. frequency, duration, and
severity) over the major river basins in Africa in the period (2071–2090) under the RCP8.5 climate scenario
with reference to the present-day climate (2011–2030). The first column (RCP8.5—PRS) shows the future
projections without the SAI intervention, while the second column (SAI—PRS) shows the future projec-
tions with the SAI intervention. The third column (SAI—RCP8.5) shows the impacts of the SAI interven-
tion on the RCP8.5 warming. The lines of the boxplot show the ensemble spread (minimum, 1st quarter,
median, 3rd quarter, and maximum), while the dot on the boxplot indicates the ensemble mean

Senegal basins), where the simulations suggest that the enhanced PET would drive the
basin towards desertification (> 25 months drought duration per decade). These results
are consistent with the findings of previous studies (e.g. Abiodun et al. 2018; Naik and
Abiodun 2020; Nguvava et al. 2019; Ogutunde et al. 2020), which used multi-model
simulations to project future drought characteristics over various basins in Africa.
The SAI intervention narrows the gaps between the SPEI and SPI projections
over all the basins by either reducing the SPEI drought or increasing the SPI drought
or doing both (Fig. 5). For example, while it reduces the gap over the Limpopo
River basin (Fig. 5b, e, and h) by decreasing the SPEI drought (Fig. 5c, f, and i), it
reduces the gap over the Juba-Shibelli basin, mainly by increasing the severity of the
SPI drought. However, over most river basins, the gap is narrowed by a simultane-
ous decrease in SPEI and increase in SPI drought (Fig. 5c, f, and i). The maximum
decrease in SPEI drought frequency (> 2 events ­decade−1) occurs over the Chad, Oka-
vango, and Senegal basins, while the maximum increase in SPI droughts occurs over
the Juba-Shibelli (> 3 events ­decade−1). It is only the Orange River basin that experi-
ences a reduction in the gap through a decrease in both SPEI and SPI droughts. Note
the differences in the drought results among the basins are not due to the differences in
the characteristics of the basins. They are due to spatial variation in the impacts of cli-
mate change and the SAI intervention on the drought characteristics over the continent
(Fig. 4), because the drought indices are obtained solely from atmospheric variables
(i.e. precipitation, minimum temperature, and maximum temperature).

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Climatic Change (2021) 169: 31 Page 13 of 19 31

3.4 Implications for drought managements in the basins

The reduction in the gap between SPEI and SPI drought projections over a basin has
significant implications for the management of droughts in the basin. We illustrate this
with a schematic diagram in Fig. 6, which depicts a case where SAI reduces the gap over
a basin by decreasing the SPEI drought frequency projection (from 4.3 events ­decade−1
to 3.1 events d­ ecade−1) and increasing the SPI drought frequency projection (from 1.7
events ­decade−1 to 2.9 events ­decade−1). This reduction lowers the level of uncertainty
relating to future changes in drought frequency over the basin, because the SPI projec-
tion (which assumes no evapotranspiration) gives the lower limit of the change, while
the SPEI projection (with potential or reference evapotranspiration) shows the upper
limit of the change. However, while the reduction in the SPEI projection alleviates the
risk of having an increase in the drought frequency of more than 4 events ­decade−1,
the increase in the SPI projection removes the possibility of having an increase in the
drought frequency of less than 2 events ­decade−1. Without the SAI intervention, the
drought management practices have an opportunity to limit the increase in drought fre-
quency to less than 2 events ­decade−1 by using various mitigations strategies (discussed
in Abiodun et al. 2018; Naik and Abiodun 2019; Nguvava et al. 2019) to minimize evap-
otranspiration from the basin, especially over water-limiting basins, where evapotran-
spiration depends more on precipitation than on atmospheric water demand. But, with
the SAI intervention, this opportunity is gone. The basin management is stuck with a
future increase of more than 2.5 events ­decade−1 in the drought frequency because of

Fig. 6  A schematic illustration of the reduction in the SPEI and SPI drought projections over a river basin
due to the SAI intervention. The first column (RCP8.5 minus PRS) shows the future projections without
the SAI intervention, while the second column (SAI minus PRS) shows the future projections with the SAI
intervention

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31 Page 14 of 19 Climatic Change (2021) 169: 31

the reduced rainfall caused by SAI. Hence, the SAI intervention may have both positive
and negative implications for drought management over the basin.

4 Conclusion

This study has investigated the extent to which the SAI intervention can mitigate the
impacts of RCP8.5 warming on drought characteristics over Africa, by focusing on the 12
biggest and most transboundary river basins that support a wide range of socio-economic
activities across the continent. Two climate simulation datasets from the GLENS Project
(i.e. control and feedback) were analysed for the study. The control dataset was used to
examine the impacts of climate change, while the two datasets were compared to examine
the impacts of the SAI intervention. Two drought indices (SPI and SPEI) were employed
in identifying and characterizing droughts over the study domain. Since SPI uses only
precipitation to define drought, whereas SPEI uses both precipitation and PET to define
drought, the gap between the SPEI and SPI projections was used to illustrate the impacts of
enhanced atmospheric evaporative demand (due to RCP8.5 warming) on the drought pro-
jections. It was also used to indicate the range of uncertainty relating to future projections
of drought and to indicate a window of opportunity to mitigate drought risk over the basin.
The results of the study can be summarized as follows:

• The RCP8.5 warming increases temperature and atmospheric evaporative demand

over Africa, and the magnitude of this increase is higher in the tropics than in the sub-
tropics. The SAI intervention offsets this increase and keeps the temperature change
within ± 0.5 °C and the PET change within ± 5 mm ­month−1.
• The RCP8.5 warming increases precipitation and induces a net CWB surplus in the
tropics, and it decreases precipitation and produces a net CWB deficit in the sub-trop-
ics. The SAI intervention overcompensates for these impacts, especially in the tropics,
where it imposes a net CWB deficit.
• The enhancement in atmospheric evaporative demand by the RCP8.5 warming intro-
duces a gap between the SPEI and SPI drought projections, but the size of this gap var-
ies over the basins; it is largest over the Senegal basin and smallest over the Zambezi
basin.
• The SAI intervention reduces the gap between SPEI and SPI drought projections over
the basin by decreasing the SPEI droughts (through a reduced temperature and there-
fore lower atmospheric demand) and by increasing the SPI droughts (through reduced
rainfall). The highest decrease in SPEI drought (frequency) occurs over the Senegal and
Lake Chad basins, while the highest increase occurs over the Juba-Shibelli basin.
• The way in which the SAI intervention reduces the gap has serious implications for
future management of droughts over the basins. While it reduces uncertainty relating to
the drought, it also increases the lower limit of the drought projections and reduces the
opportunity to mitigate the drought risk.

To obtain more robust information for policy making, the results of this study can be
improved in different ways. Using hydrological models to downscale the results to river
basin scales would provide more valuable information on the potential impacts of SAI
intervention on streamflow, soil moisture, groundwater, and the associated hydrological
droughts. The results of this study are based on GLENS, which employed a single model,

13
Climatic Change (2021) 169: 31 Page 15 of 19 31

single scenario, and single SAI strategy. Further studies could use more datasets from other
SAI simulations (e.g. the Geoengineering Model Intercomparison Project, GeoMIP) and
consider the influence of different SAI designs on the results. Nonetheless, there is reason
to expect the broad conclusions may be somewhat robust, both with regard to the choice of
climate model and the strategy employed, since the gap between SPEI and SPI results from
a reduction in evaporative demand (which is a consequence of reduced temperatures), and
this will remain true for any SAI simulation. The reduction in precipitation over much of
Africa seen in GLENS may be different in different simulations; it is still present to some
extent for different SAI strategies in the same model (e.g. Kravitz et al. 2016; Lee et al.
2020). Different models participating in GeoMIP show different regional patterns over
Africa, but all show some subtropical precipitation reduction (Visioni et al. 2021).
Hausfather and Peters (2020) argued that the RCP8.5 scenario used in the study may be
more of a ‘worst-case’ scenario rather than the ‘business-as-usual’ scenario. Since SRM is
meant to avoid high levels of global warming (i.e. serious overshoot of 2.0oC), the GLENS
experiments targeted the RCP85 scenario, which is the scenario where SRM might be most
seriously considered. However, we used this scenario because it is the only scenario avail-
able in the GLENS datasets. To explore the robustness of the results under more plausi-
ble scenarios (e.g. SSP2-4.5, SSP4-6.0, and SSP3-7.0; Hausfather and Peters 2020), future
studies would use other datasets with various climate scenarios. Nonetheless, while the
signal is higher under the high-emissions case, it is reasonable to expect the pattern of
changes would be similar in a lower-emission scenario, with the magnitude of changes
roughly proportional to the amount of warming being offset by SAI (see, e.g. MacMartin
et al. 2019).

Acknowledgements We acknowledge the financial support of the DECIMALS fund of the Solar Radiation
Management Governance Initiative, which was set up in 2010 by the Royal Society, Environmental Defense
Fund and The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) and is funded by the Open Philanthropy Project. The
first author is also supported by the Water Research Commission (WRC, South Africa). The data used in
this study are available to the community via the Earth System Grid (see information at www.​cesm.​ucar.​
edu/​proje​cts/​commu​nity‐proje​cts/​GLENS/). The CESM project is supported primarily by the National Sci-
ence Foundation. The Centre for High Performance Computing (CHPC, South Africa) provided the comput-
ing facility used for the study. We thank the reviewers and the editor for their constructive comments, which
strengthened the paper.

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License,
which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long
as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Com-
mons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article
are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the
material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not
permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly
from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://​creat​iveco​mmons.​org/​licen​ses/​by/4.​0/.

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Authors and Affiliations

Babatunde J. Abiodun1 · Romaric C. Odoulami2 · Windmanagda Sawadogo3 ·

Olumuyiwa A. Oloniyo1 · Abayomi A. Abatan4 · Mark New2 · Christopher Lennard1 ·
Pinto Izidine1 · Temitope S. Egbebiyi1 · Douglas G. MacMartin5
Romaric C. Odoulami
[email protected]
Mark New
[email protected]
1
Climate Systems Analysis Group, Department of Environmental and Geographical Science,
University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
2
African Climate and Development Initiative, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
3
Institute of Geography, University of Augsburg, Augsburg, Germany
4
College of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK
5
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

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