Vol.:(0123456789) 1 3 Environ Monit Assess (2021) 193:831 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-021-09547-4 Projected changes in East African climate and its impacts on climatic suitability of maize production areas by the mid‑twenty‑first century Moses A. Ojara · Lou Yunsheng · Victor Ongoma · Lucia Mumo · David Akodi · Brian Ayugi · Bob Alex Ogwang  Received: 12 June 2021 / Accepted: 19 October 2021 © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 in precipitation under both RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 in certain places and a reduction in most of southern Tanzania. The temperature projection showed that the minimum temperature would increase by 0.3 to 2.95 °C and 0.3 to 3.2 °C under RCP4.5 and 8.5, respectively. Moreover, the maximum temperature would increase by 1.0 to 3.0 °C and 1.2 to 3.6 °C under RCP4.5 and 8.5 respectively. The impacts of these projected changes in climate on maize produc- tion areas are the reduction in the suitability of the crop, especially around central and western Tanzania, mid-northern and western Uganda, and parts of west- ern Kenya by 20–40%, and patches of EA will experi- ence a reduction of as high as 40–60%, especially in northern Uganda, and western Kenya. The projected changes in temperature and precipitation present a Abstract Maize crop (Zea mays) is one of the sta- ple foods in the East African (EA) region. However, the suitability of its production area is threatened by projected climate change. The Multimodel Ensemble (MME) from eight Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 5 (CMIP5) models was used in this paper to show climate change between the recent past (1970– 2000) and the future (2041–2060), i.e., the mid- twenty-frst century. The climatic suitability of maize crop production areas is evaluated based on these climate datasets and the current maize crop pres- ence points using Maximum entropy models (Max- Ent). The MME projection showed a slight increase Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at https://doi. org/10.1007/s10661-021-09547-4. M. A. Ojara (*) · L. Yunsheng · L. Mumo · B. Ayugi  Collaborative Innovation Center On Forecast and Evaluation of Meteorological Disasters, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing 210044, China e-mail: ojacksmoz@gmail.com M. A. Ojara · L. Yunsheng · L. Mumo  Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Agricultural Meteorology, College of Applied Meteorology, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing 210044, China M. A. Ojara · B. A. Ogwang  Directorate of Training and Research, Uganda National Meteorological Authority, Plot 21, 28 Port Bell Rd, P.O. Box 7025, Kampala, Uganda V. Ongoma  International Water Research Institute, Mohammed VI Polytechnic University, Lot 660, Hay Moulay Rachid, Ben Guerir 43150, Morocco D. Akodi  National Agricultural Organization, NARO Uganda, P.O. Box 7065 Kampala, Uganda B. Ayugi  Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Atmospheric Environment Monitoring and Pollution Control, Collaborative Innovation Center of Atmospheric Environment and Equipment Technology, School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing 210044, China