Extreme weather to increase around Indian Ocean Available to Purchase

In austral spring, southeasterly trade winds blow across the Indian Ocean from Northern Australia past Indonesia to Kenya and the countries of eastern Equatorial Africa. In most years, the patterns of temperature and rainfall associated with the winds are steady, but in some years an anomaly known as the positive Indian Ocean Dipole (pIOD) develops. Triggered by a lowering of the sea surface temperature off Java and Sumatra, a pIOD strengthens the easterly winds in that region and along the equator. The winds deprive Australia and Indonesia of moisture, but when they reach the waters off East Africa, they boost evaporation and, ultimately, rainfall. The consequences can be devastating. The pIOD event of 1997 led to thousands of flooding deaths in East Africa and to costly wildfires in Australia, Borneo, and other Indonesian islands (see satellite image). As Earth’s climate warms, the frequency and severity of pIOD events could...