Miguel, Satyanath, and Sergenti (2004) argue that lower rainfall levels and negative rainfall shocks increase conflict risk in Sub-Saharan Africa. This conclusion rests on their finding of a negative correlation between conflict in t and rainfall growth between t-1 and t-2. I argue that this finding is driven by a positive correlation between conflict in t and rainfall levels in t-2. If lower r...

Rainfall erosivity, considering rainfall amount and intensity, is an important parameter for soil erosion risk assessment under future land use and climate change. Despite its importance, rainfall erosivity is usually implemented in models with a low spatial and temporal resolution. The purpose of this study is to assess the temporaland spatial distribution of rainfall erosivity in form of the ...

Multiple observational data sets and atmosphere-only simulations from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 are analyzed to characterize recent rainfall variability and trends over Africa focusing on 1983–2010. Data sets exhibiting spurious variability, linked in part to a reduction in rain gauge density, were identified. The remaining observations display coherent increases in annu...

The temporal variability of rainfall and raindrop processes is examined at time scales ranging from less than 1 minute to 1 hour. Raindrop processes are represented in terms of drop arrival rate, mean diameter and coe cient of variation of drop diameter and modeled as time-varying stochastic processes. It is shown that rainfall rate and accumulated rainfall have simple and accurate representati...