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The warming rates projected by an ensemble of the Coupled Model Intercomparion Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) global climate models (GCMs) over southern Africa (south of 10 degrees latitude) are investigated. The low resolution GCMs forced by four representative concentration pathways (RCPs) have been interpolated to a common resolution using a bilinear interpolation scheme. Warming is defined in terms of absolute differences in annual-mean near-surface air temperatures between two twenty-year time slices (2046-2065 and 2081-2100) and the historical period 1986-2005. In all RCPs, CMIP5 models project a higher warming rate over the southwestern parts centred around the arid Kalahari and Namib deserts and extending towards northern South Africa, eastern Namibia, western Botswana and southern Angola. The higher warming rates over these areas outpace global warming by up to a factor 2 in some …