Fig. 3

Relationship between changes in geopotential over the north Arabian Sea and changes in East African May rainfall. a, b Mean May 850 hPa geopotential height over the North Arabian Sea from ERA-Interim and mean May precipitation over East Africa from GPCP and CHIRPS over 1986–2018 smoothed with a 3 year moving average. The corresponding scatter plot (CHIRPS) is shown in (b). Correlation was calculated on the unsmoothed time-series. c The median change in cessation date of the long rains over East Africa from P1 to P2 in each AMIP model is plotted against the mean change in 850 hPa geopotential height over the north Arabian Sea from P1 to P2. The numbers correspond to the numbers for each AMIP model in Table 1 (methods); the cross shows the multi-model mean. The circle shows the observations; the change in geopotential height was calculated from ERA-Interim, and the change in cessation from the cessation dates computed using CHIRPS data