Combining climatological insight with state-of-the-art methods in conflict economics, this paper introduces a novel concept in the literature: the impact of the velocity of climate change on riots in Sub-Saharan Africa. Based on a standardized drought index, we build a variable expressing the shifting velocity of climate anomalies. We rely on 4-yearly data at the cell level (0.5°×0.5°), a disaggregation that is tailored to the study of intra-decennial weather trends and locally confined conflicts. We build our empirical strategy from previous results in the conflict literature, which show that negative water shocks (droughts) increase the likelihood of riot occurrence. Our results show that the velocity of drying has a significant amplifying effect on the weather shock - riot relationship. On the contrary, the favorable effects that climatic shifts towards more humid conditions could bring – namely, promoting peace, lose strength in the face of country-wide socio-political and economic drivers. We also find evidence of some, although limited, adaptive capacity in the long run (~ 30 years). Maladaptive strategies are used to cope with climatic duress in the short run (< 4 years). These include regional migrations (<100 km), which effect is to merely geographically shift conflicts over resources instead of reducing them.