Table 2.

Projected changes of key climate variables between current, projected 2030s and 2050s climates in the West African cocoa belt^a

Variable	Current climate	2030s climate (15 GCMs)			2050s climate (19 GCMs)
	Average	Average	Lowest quartile	Highest quartile	Average	Lowest quartile	Highest quartile
Annual mean temperature (°C)	25.5	26.6	26.2	27.0	27.1	26.6	27.6
Maximum temperature of warmest month (°C)	32.7	33.8	33.0	34.3	34.2	33.4	35.0
Annual precipitation (mm)	1809	1843	1728	1949	1857	1724	2000
Precipitation of driest month (mm)	20	20	14	25	21	14	28
Precipitation of driest quarter (mm)	100	99	84	114	101	82	122
Annual evapotranspiration (ETP, mm)	822	830	800	848	838	808	857
ETP of driest month (mm)	76	76	73	79	76	72	79
ETP of driest quarter (mm)	223	224	215	231	225	215	232
Excess precipitation over ETP for the driest month (mm)	−56	−56	−59	−54	−55	−58	−51
Excess precipitation over ETP for the driest quarter (mm)	−122	−127	−145	−109	−127	−144	−110
Consecutive months with <100 mm precipitation	3.9	3.0	2.7	3.2	2.8	2.7	3.2

^a2030s and 2050s climate projections are according to 15 and 19 Global Circulation Models (GCMs), respectively. Variability among GCM projections are shown as the lowest and highest quartile of the distribution of projected climate values for the GCMs. All values are spatial averages for the entire cocoa belt