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Climate impacts of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation in Africa

Nature Reviews Earth & Environment volume 6, pages 503–520 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

The El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) — describing shifts between warm El Niño and cold La Niña phases — has a substantial effect on the global climate. In this Review, we outline the mechanisms and climate impacts of ENSO in Africa, focusing on rainfall. ENSO’s influence varies strongly by season, region, phase, event and decade, highlighting complex dynamics and asymmetries. Although difficult to generalize, key characteristics include: anomalies across the Sahel in July–September, related to the tropospheric temperature mechanism; a strong dipole in anomalies between eastern and southern Africa during October–December (the short rain reason) and December–February, linked to interactions with the Indian Ocean Dipole and Indian Ocean Basin mode, respectively; and anomalies over southern Africa (with possible indications of opposite anomalies over East Africa) during March–May (the long rain season), associated with continuation of the Indian Ocean Basin mode. These teleconnections tend to be most pronounced for East Pacific El Niño and Central Pacific La Niña events, as well as during decades when interbasin interactions are strongest. Although challenging to simulate, climate models suggest that these impacts will strengthen in the future, manifesting as an increased frequency of ENSO-related dry and wet extremes. Given the reliance of much of Africa on rain-fed agriculture, resolving these relationships is vital, necessitating realistic simulation of regional circulations, ENSO and its interbasin interactions.

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Fig. 1: Mechanisms of impact of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) on African climate.
Fig. 2: Seasonal evolution of observed ENSO impacts on African rainfall.
Fig. 3: Influence of decadal variability on ENSO–rainfall relationships in Africa.
Fig. 4: IOD and IOB influence on ENSO–African rainfall relationships.
Fig. 5: Future change of African rainfall associated with ENSO.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to J. Gan and the team from the Centre for Ocean Research, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, for hosting the workshop on “Climate Variability and Impact on Africa” and for providing travel support. This project is supported by SKLLQGYS01. H.C.N was supported by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) grant 456490637. N.K. was supported by the research council of Norway (grant no. 328935). E.M. and B.R.-F. received funding from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation projects (PID2021-125806NB-I00 and TED2021-130106B-I00). G.W., B.N., A.S.T. and X.Z. are supported by the Climate Systems Hub of the Australian Government’s National Environment Science Program. S.L. was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) projects 42376198 and 42006173. PMEL contribution no. 5586. The authors acknowledge the World Climate Research Programme’s Working Group on Coupled Modelling, which is responsible for CMIP, and they thank the climate modelling groups for producing and making available their model output, and the US Department of Energy Program for Climate Model Diagnosis and Intercomparison for coordinating support and leading development of software infrastructure in partnership with the Global Organization for Earth System Science Portals. The authors are grateful to various reanalysis groups for making the datasets available.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Physical Oceanography/Frontiers Science Center for Deep Ocean Multispheres and Earth System/Sanya Oceanographic Institution, Ocean University of China, Qingdao, China

    Wenju Cai, Lixin Wu, Yi Liu, Xiaopei Lin, Shujun Li, Junkai Wang, Li Zhang & Ziguang Li

  2. State Key Laboratory of Loess Science, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi’an, China

    Wenju Cai

  3. Laoshan Laboratory, Qingdao, China

    Wenju Cai, Lixin Wu, Tao Geng, Fan Jia, Xiaopei Lin, Shujun Li & Li Zhang

  4. Department of Oceanography, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

    Chris Reason

  5. Departamento de Física de la Tierra y Astrofísica, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Elsa Mohino & Belen Rodríguez-Fonseca

  6. Instituto de Geociencias, IGEO (UCM-CSIC), Madrid, Spain

    Belen Rodríguez-Fonseca

  7. Agricultural Research Council-Natural Resources and Engineering, Pretoria, South Africa

    Johan Malherbe

  8. CLIVAR International Project Office, Qingdao, China

    Agus Santoso

  9. Climate Change Research Centre (CCRC), University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    Agus Santoso & Andrea S. Taschetto

  10. Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Xichen Li

  11. Institute of Ocean Research, Peking Unviersity, Beijing, China

    Xichen Li

  12. Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Limpopo, Mankweng, South Africa

    Hector Chikoore

  13. GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, Kiel, Germany

    Hyacinth Nnamchi

  14. Department of Geography, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Nigeria

    Hyacinth Nnamchi

  15. NOAA/Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, Seattle, WA, USA

    Michael J. McPhaden

  16. Geophysical Institute, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway

    Noel Keenlyside

  17. Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway

    Noel Keenlyside

  18. Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Centre, Bergen, Norway

    Noel Keenlyside

  19. Nansen-Tutu Centre for Marine Environmental Research, Department of Oceanography, University of Cape Town, South Africa, South Africa

    Noel Keenlyside

  20. ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    Andrea S. Taschetto

  21. ARC Centre of Excellence for the Weather of the 21st Century, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    Andrea S. Taschetto

  22. CSIRO Environment, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia

    Benjamin Ng, Kai Yang, Guojian Wang & Xuebin Zhang

  23. Key Laboratory of Ocean Circulation and Waves, Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Qingdao, China

    Fan Jia

  24. College of Global Change and Earth System Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China

    Yun Yang

  25. Department of Physics, University of Yaounde, Yaounde, Cameroon

    Pokam Wilfried

  26. Department of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences, University at Albany, State University of New York (SUNY), Albany, NY, USA

    Liming Zhou

  27. Global Change Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

    Francois Engelbrecht

  28. Department of Environmental Studies, New York University, New York, NY, USA

    Zhuoran Li

  29. University of Nairobi, Nairobi, Kenya

    Joseph N. Mutemi

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Contributions

W.C. and M.J.M. conceived the article. The manuscript was written as a group effort through participation in several “Climate Impact on Africa” workshops held online and at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. W.C. designed the article and coordinated the writing. A.S. synthesized workshop key points. J.M. led Box 1. C.R., E.M. and B.R.-F. led discussion and revision of content synthesized into the ‘Dynamical connections of ENSO to Africa’ and ‘ENSO effects on the African climate’ sections. W.C. led other sections. Xichen. L., B.N., Y.L. and T.G. performed analyses and created the figures. All authors contributed to the manuscript preparation, interpretation and discussions.

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Correspondence to Wenju Cai or Agus Santoso.

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Cai, W., Reason, C., Mohino, E. et al. Climate impacts of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation in Africa. Nat Rev Earth Environ 6, 503–520 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-025-00705-7

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