The African continent hosts a wide variety of climates, ranging from tropical rainforests to arid deserts, shaped by the interplay between monsoon systems, large-scale atmospheric circulation, and regional geographic features. This climatic diversity supports a wide variety of ecosystems and biodiversity, while also contributing to the continent’s exceptional diversity of environments and human societies. Moreover, Africa preserves some of the oldest and richest early hominin fossil records, alongside a detailed archaeological record, providing a vital resource for understanding human origins and how human populations have adapted to changing environmental conditions. Today, climate variability and extremes profoundly affect water availability, agriculture, ecosystems, and livelihoods across the continent. As the climate changes, improving our understanding of past and present climate variability, and of the processes driving it, is essential for understanding its impacts and building resilience to future changes.

The extent to which climate models may under- or overestimate Africa’s hydroclimate and temperature changes is currently poorly known. Instrumental records and paleoclimate reconstructions are limited to only some African regions. This hampers our understanding of climate variability across time and space. Consequently, climate models continue to exhibit significant biases in their representation of monsoon systems. The past evolution of the African climate and projections of its future evolution remain uncertain. Therefore, improving our understanding of the mechanisms driving monsoon circulations, land–atmosphere interactions, and convection processes is therefore essential to better simulate monsoon systems and climate across Africa.

We welcome contributions on all aspects of African climate: from paleoclimate reconstructions to future projections, including S2S to decadal prediction, centennial to orbital scale changes, and work emphasising physical processes and numerical modelling. We also invite studies on climate-related applications using Natural Language Processing and other ML/AI techniques, as well as presentations on operational applications and observational networks. We also welcome studies connecting African climate change and variability to human health and adaptation, food and water security, and socio-economic development.