Circulation patterns and rainfall associated with the Feb–Mar 2000 Mozambique floods

The La Nina event which continued through 1999-2000 resulted in heavy rains over Mozambique, South Africa, Swaziland and Zimbabwe during the Jan-Mar 2000 rainy season. In addition, during Feb-Mar 2000, a series of tropical cyclones that developed over the Indian ocean moved across Madagascar and made landfall in Mozambique. This brought additional rains to southern Africa, and caused flooding downstream in Mozambique. This paper examines the circulation patterns associated with these extreme events of the 1999-2000 rainy season. NCEP/NCAR re-analyses are used to compute daily mean and climatological fields. This helps to determine the influence of the cold ENSO event on the southern African rains. In addition, the contribution of each extreme event to total rainfall in the region is analyzed using satellite based and rain gauge estimates. Finally, we examine how the MRF forecasts compare with observations.