Southern Africa, broadly defined here as Africa south of the equator, is a region prone to pronounced flood and drought events and significant climate variability on a range of time scales. Some of this variability is thought to be forced remotely via ENSO (e.g., Nicholson and Entekhabi, 1986; Lindesay et al., 1988; Mason and Jury, 1997; Nicholson and Kim, 1997; Reason et al., 2000; Allan et al., 2003) while some is related to variability in the neighbouring Indian and Atlantic Oceans (e.g., Hirst and Haste, 1983; Lough, 1986; Ogallo et al., 1988; Walker, 1990; Mason, 1995; Reason and Mulenga, 1999; Reason, 1999; Behera and Yamagata, 2001; Rouault et al., 2003) or to local land surface processes (Zheng and Eltahir, 1998; Douville et al., 2001). It should be stated at the outset that climate variability over southern Africa is complex with a multitude of forcing factors that interact with each other and wax and wane in their importance through the record. Landman and Mason (1997), Richard et al. (2000), Allan et al. (1996, 2003) amongst others all provide evidence of how the ENSO influence on southern Africa has varied while Mulenga et al. (2003) show that some dry seasons over northern South Africa may be directly related to ENSO whereas others show an influence from the subtropical and midlatitude Atlantic. In this paper, the focus is on possible relationships between the Atlantic Ocean and southern African climate and we begin by considering the annual cycle of SST, winds and moisture fluxes over this region.