Nash et al. (2026) Annual and Seasonal Rainfall Variability in Mozambique During the Nineteenth Century

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Identification

• Journal: International Journal of Climatology
• Year: 2026
• Date: 2026-09-06
• Authors: David; id_orcid 0000-0002-7641-5857 Nash, Matthew Hannaford, Bárbara Direito
• DOI: 10.1002/joc.70578

Research Groups

Not specified in the provided text.

Short Summary

This study presents the first annually and seasonally resolved documentary rainfall reconstructions for Mozambique from 1817 to 1900, revealing significant spatial-temporal variability and non-stationary relationships with ENSO.

Objective

• To reconstruct long-term rainfall variability in Mozambique (1817–1900) using documentary evidence to provide a baseline for assessing climate risk and evaluating climate model simulations.

Study Configuration

• Spatial Scale: Mozambique, divided into three homogeneous rainfall zones.
• Temporal Scale: 1817–1900 (annual and seasonal resolution).

Methodology and Data

• Models used: A structured, multi-source classification framework incorporating explicit confidence ratings.
• Data sources: Over 5700 documentary observations collected from 21 archival repositories across Africa, Europe, and North America, including Portuguese-language materials.

Main Results

• Rainfall Variability: Identified pronounced spatial and temporal variability, with strong coherence between the central and southern zones.
• Extreme Events:
  • Multi-year droughts occurred during 1824–35, 1857–59, 1861–63, 1871–78, 1884–87, and 1893–98.
  • Extremely wet rainy seasons were recorded in 1818–19, 1839–40, 1854–55, 1860–61, 1865–66, 1870–71, 1872–73, and 1898–99.
• Seasonal Dynamics: Intra-annual variability was found to be a critical determinant of annual conditions.
• Climate Teleconnections: While El Niño events often coincided with drier conditions in central and southern Mozambique, the teleconnections were generally nonlinear and statistically non-significant, with no consistent wet signal for La Niña, suggesting non-stationarity relative to the instrumental period.

Contributions

• Provides a rare, high-resolution historical baseline for rainfall in the southwest Indian Ocean region.
• Addresses linguistic bias in historical climatology by integrating Portuguese-language archival data.
• Offers a dataset for testing the accuracy of climate model simulations for the 19th century.

Funding

Not specified in the provided text.

Citation

@article{Nash2026Annual,
  author = {Nash, David; id_orcid 0000-0002-7641-5857 and Hannaford, Matthew and Direito, Bárbara},
  title = {Annual and Seasonal Rainfall Variability in Mozambique During the Nineteenth Century},
  journal = {International Journal of Climatology},
  year = {2026},
  doi = {10.1002/joc.70578},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1002/joc.70578}
}