Abstract
Climate of Egypt between dryness and torrential rainfall: patterns of climate variability.
Marina Baldi
National Research Council of Italy, Institute of Biometeorology (CNR – IBIMET).
Egypt, like the whole of North Africa has undergone major and sometimes dramatic climate changes in the last 10,000 years. About 5000 years ago, in the same area, then covered with vegetation, has begun a desertification process culminated around 1500 BC, and caused, probably, by changes in the radiative balance of the Sun-Earth-Atmosphere, due to changes of the orbital parameters of the planet.
Today, the climate of Egypt is classified as arid, desert, and very dry, with an average annual temperature of 18 ° C, where rainfall is scarce, and only concentrated in the winter months along the Mediterranean coast. Despite these already extreme features, recent studies have shown not only that Egypt is experiencing, since the 60s, a rise in average temperatures, especially in the summer months, but also that improbable events such as sporadic torrential rains occur in the country (for example, in November 1994, January 2010). The study proposed will permit, on one side, to assess the recent changes in the climate of the Country and on the other to have a more complete picture of extreme rainfall events and of the large scale atmospheric conditions leading to them.
For the success of the project, it will be critical to interact with scientists from the Universities of Cairo (Prof Gamal El-Afandi) and from the Egyptian Meteorological Authority (Prof Abdellatif E.A. Abdou).
In this respect the Cultural Attaché of the Embassy of Egypt in Rome would play a key role in order to promote and support the contacts between the Italian and Egyptian partners.
