The Experts below are selected from a list of 360 Experts worldwide ranked by ideXlab platform
Michela Biasutti - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
-
variability and predictability of west african droughts a review on the role of sea surface temperature anomalies
Journal of Climate, 2015Co-Authors: Belen Rodriguezfonseca, Michela Biasutti, Kerry H Cook, Marco Gaetani, Elsa Mohino, Edward K Vizy, Carlos R Mechoso, Cyril Caminade, Javier Garciaserrano, Yongkang XueAbstract:The Sahel experienced a severe drought during the 1970s and 1980s after wet periods in the 1950s and 1960s. Although rainfall partially recovered since the 1990s, the drought had devastating impacts on society. Most studies agree that this dry period resulted primarily from remote effects of sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies amplified by local land surface-atmosphere interactions. This paper reviews advances made during the last decade to better understand the impact of global SST variability on West African rainfall at interannual to decadal time scales. At interannual time scales, a warming of the equatorial Atlantic and Pacific/Indian Oceans results in rainfall reduction over the Sahel, and positive SST anomalies over the Mediterranean Sea tend to be associated with increased rainfall. At decadal time scales, warming over the tropics leads to drought over the Sahel, whereas warming over the North Atlantic promotes increased rainfall. Prediction systems have evolved from seasonal to decadal forecasting. The agreement among future projections has improved from CMIP3 to CMIP5, with a general tendency for slightly wetter conditions over the central part of the Sahel, drier conditions over the western part, and a delay in the monsoon onset. The role of the Indian Ocean, the stationarity of teleconnections, the determination of the leader ocean basin in driving decadal variability, the anthropogenic role, the reduction of the model rainfall spread, and the improvement of some model components are among the most important remaining questions that continue to be the focus of current international projects.
-
forced Sahel rainfall trends in the cmip5 archive
Journal of Geophysical Research, 2013Co-Authors: Michela BiasuttiAbstract:[1] The simulations of the fifth Coupled Models Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) strengthen previous assessments of a substantial role of anthropogenic emissions in driving precipitation changes in the Sahel, the semiarid region at the southern edge of the Sahara. Historical simulations can capture the magnitude of the centennial Sahel drying over the span of the 20th century and confirm that anthropogenic forcings have contributed substantially to it. Yet, the models do not reproduce the amplitude of observed oscillations at multidecadal timescales, suggesting that either oscillations in the forcing or the strength of natural variability are underestimated. Projections for Sahel rainfall are less robust than the 20th century hindcast and outlier projections persist, but overall the CMIP5 models confirm the CMIP3 results in many details and reaffirm the prediction of a rainy season that is more feeble at its start, especially in West Africa, and more abundant at its core across the entire Sahel. Out of 20 models, four buck this consensus. Idealized simulations from a subset of the CMIP5 ensemble—simulations designed to separate the fast land-atmosphere response to increased greenhouse gases (GHGs) from the slow response mediated through changes in sea surface temperature (SST)—confirm that the direct effect of CO2 is to enhance the monsoon, while warmer SST induce drying over the Sahel. At the same time, these simulations suggest that the seasonal evolution of the rainfall trends in the scenario simulations, spring drying and fall wetting, is an inherently coupled response, not captured by the linear superposition of the fast and slow response to CO2.
-
delayed Sahel rainfall and global seasonal cycle in a warmer climate
Geophysical Research Letters, 2009Co-Authors: Michela Biasutti, Adam H SobelAbstract:[1] Twenty-first century projections of global rainfall and sea surface temperature in the current generation of climate models indicate a delay in the seasonal cycle in response to increasing greenhouse gases, with important implications for the regional monsoons. In particular, the rainy season of the semi-arid African Sahel is projected to start later and become shorter. The robust agreement across models on the seasonal distribution of Sahel rainfall changes stands in contrast with large uncertainty for summertime rainfall totals there.
-
the role of the sahara low in summertime Sahel rainfall variability and change in the cmip3 models
Journal of Climate, 2009Co-Authors: Michela Biasutti, Adam H Sobel, Suzana J CamargoAbstract:Projections for twenty-first-century changes in summertime Sahel precipitation differ greatly across models in the third Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP3) dataset and cannot be explained solely in terms of discrepancies in the projected anomalies in global SST. This study shows that an index describing the low-level circulation in the North Atlantic‐African region, namely, the strength of the low-level Saharan low, correlates with Sahel rainfall in all models and at the time scales of both interannual and interdecadal natural variability and of the forced centennial trend. An analysis of Sahel interannual variability provides evidence that variations in the Sahara low can be a cause, not just a consequence, of variations in Sahel rainfall and suggests that a better understanding of the sources of model discrepancy in Sahel rainfall predictions might be gained from an analysis of the mechanisms influencing changes in the Sahara low.
-
a climate model based review of drought in the Sahel desertification the re greening and climate change
Global and Planetary Change, 2008Co-Authors: Alessandra Giannini, Michela Biasutti, Michel M VerstraeteAbstract:We review the evidence that connects drought and desertification in the Sahel with climate change past, present and future. Advances in climate modeling point to the oceans, not land, as the cause of the recent persistence of drought in the Sahel. The current generation of global climate models reproduces the spatial extent, continental in scale, and the timing and duration of the shift to dry conditions that occurred in the late 1960's given knowledge of observed surface oceanic conditions only. The pattern statistically and dynamically associated with drought is one of warming of the tropical oceans, especially the Pacific and Indian Oceans, superimposed on an enhanced warming of the southern compared to the northern hemisphere most evident in the Atlantic. These models, which include a prognostic description of land surface and/or vegetation, albeit crude, indicate that positive feedbacks between precipitation and land surface/cover may act to amplify the ocean-forced component of continental climate. Despite the advances made in understanding the recent past, uncertainty dominates as we move forward in time, to the present, partial greening of the Sahel, and to the future of climate change projections.
Serge Janicot - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
-
tropical sst and Sahel rainfall a non stationary relationship
Geophysical Research Letters, 2012Co-Authors: Juergen Bader, Elsa Mohino, Serge Janicot, Teresa Losada, Belen Rodriguezfonseca, Carlos R MechosoAbstract:[1] Sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies in the tropical Atlantic have been associated with precipitation anomalies in West Africa that form a dipole pattern with centers over the Sahel and the Gulf of Guinea. Whilst this was clear before the 1970's, the dipole pattern almost disappeared after that date, as the anti-correlation between rainfall anomalies in the Sahel and Guinea dropped abruptly. Simultaneously, the anti-correlations between Sahel rainfall and tropical Pacific SSTs strengthened. It has been posited that these changes after the 1970's developed as rainfall over West Africa started to co-vary with SSTs in the global tropics. In this co-variability, enhanced summer rainfall over West Africa with a monopole pattern corresponds to warmer SSTs in the tropical Atlantic and Maritime Continent, and colder SSTs in the tropical Pacific and western Indian Oceans. The present paper describes the hitherto unexplored seasonal evolution of this co-variability and the physical mechanisms at work. Sensitivity experiments with two atmospheric general circulation models demonstrate that, after the 1970's, the impacts of SST anomalies in the Indo-Pacific counteract those in the Atlantic in terms of generating rainfall anomalies over the Sahel, and that this superposition of effects is primarily linear. Therefore, at interannual timescales, the change in the patterns of co-variability between West African rainfall and tropical SSTs can explain the non-stationary relationship between the anomalies in these two fields.
-
Sahel rainfall and decadal to multi-decadal sea surface temperature variability
Climate Dynamics, 2011Co-Authors: Elsa Mohino, Serge Janicot, Juergen BaderAbstract:Decadal Sahelian rainfall variability was mainly driven by sea surface temperatures (SSTs) during the twentieth century. At the same time SSTs showed a marked long-term global warming (GW) trend. Superimposed on this long-term trend decadal and multi-decadal variability patterns are observed like the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) and the inter-decadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO). Using an atmospheric general circulation model we investigate the relative contribution of each component to the Sahelian precipitation variability. To take into account the uncertainty related to the use of different SST data sets, we perform the experiments using HadISST1 and ERSSTv3 reconstructed sets. The simulations show that all three SST signals have a significant impact over West Africa: the positive phases of the GW and the IPO lead to drought over the Sahel, while a positive AMO enhances Sahel rainfall. The tropical SST warming is the main cause for the GW impact on Sahel rainfall. Regarding the AMO, the pattern of anomalous precipitation is established by the SSTs in the Atlantic and Mediterranean basins. In turn, the tropical SST anomalies control the impact of the IPO component on West Africa. Our results suggest that the low-frequency evolution of Sahel rainfall can be interpreted as the competition of three factors: the effect of the GW, the AMO and the IPO. Following this interpretation, our results show that 50% of the SST-driven Sahel drought in the 1980s is explained by the change to a negative phase of the AMO, and that the GW contribution was 10%. In addition, the partial recovery of Sahel rainfall in recent years was mainly driven by the AMO.
-
summer Sahel enso teleconnection and decadal time scale sst variations
Climate Dynamics, 2001Co-Authors: Serge Janicot, S Trzaska, I PoccardAbstract:The correlation between Sahel rainfall and El Nino–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in the northern summer has been varying for the last fifty years. We propose that the existence of periods of weak or strong relationship could result from an interaction with the global decadal scale sea surface temperature (SST) background. The main modes of SST variability have been extracted through a principal component analysis with Varimax rotation. The correlations between a July-September Sahel rainfall index and these SST modes have been computed on a 20-year running window between 1945 and 1993. The correlations with the interannual ENSO-SST mode are negative, not significant in the 1960s during the transition period from the wet climate phasis to the long-running drought in the Sahel, but then were significant since 1976. During the former period, the correlations between the Sahel rainfall index and the other SST modes (expressing mostly on quasi and multi-decadal scales) are the highest, in particular correlations with the tropical Atlantic “dipole”. Correlations between Sahel and Guinea Coast rainfall are also significantly negative. After 1970, the Sahel-Guinea Coast rainfall correlations are no longer significant, and the ENSO-SST mode becomes the only one significantly correlated with Sahel rainfall, especially due to the impact of warm events. The partial correlations between the ENSO-SST mode and the Sahel rainfall index, when the influence of the other SST modes are eliminated, are significant over all the 20-year running periods between 1945 and 1993, suggesting that this summer teleconnection could be modulated by the decadal scale SST background. The NCEP/NCAR reanalyses reproduce accurately the interannual variability of the atmospheric circulation after 1968. In particular a regional West African Monsoon Index (WAMI), combining wind speed anomalies at 925 and 200 hPa, is highly correlated with the July-September Sahel rainfall index. A warm ENSO event is associated both with an eastward mean sea level pressure gradient between the eastern tropical Pacific and the tropical Atlantic and with a northward pressure gradient along the western coast of West Africa. This pattern leads to enhanced trade winds over the tropical Atlantic and to weaker moisture advection over West Africa, consistent with a weaker monsoon system strength and a weaker Southern Hemisphere Hadley circulation. The NCEP/NCAR reanalyses do not reproduce accurately the decadal variability of the atmospheric circulation over West Africa because of artifical biases. Therefore the impact of the decadal scale pattern of the atmospheric circulation has been investigated with atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM) sensitivity experiments, by forcing the ARPEGE-Climat model with different combinations of an El Nino-like SST pattern with the pattern of the main mode of decadal scale SST variability where the hightest weights are located in the Pacific and Indian basins. AGCM outputs show that the decadal scale SST variations weakly affect Sahel rainfall variability but that they do induce an indirect effect on Sahel rainfall by enhancing the impact of the warm ENSO phases after 1980, through an increase in the fill-in of the monsoon trough and a moisture advection deficit over West Africa.
-
summer Sahel enso teleconnection and decadal time scale sst variations
Climate Dynamics, 2001Co-Authors: Serge Janicot, S Trzaska, I PoccardAbstract:The correlation between Sahel rainfall and El Nino–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in the northern summer has been varying for the last fifty years. We propose that the existence of periods of weak or strong relationship could result from an interaction with the global decadal scale sea surface temperature (SST) background. The main modes of SST variability have been extracted through a principal component analysis with Varimax rotation. The correlations between a July-September Sahel rainfall index and these SST modes have been computed on a 20-year running window between 1945 and 1993. The correlations with the interannual ENSO-SST mode are negative, not significant in the 1960s during the transition period from the wet climate phasis to the long-running drought in the Sahel, but then were significant since 1976. During the former period, the correlations between the Sahel rainfall index and the other SST modes (expressing mostly on quasi and multi-decadal scales) are the highest, in particular correlations with the tropical Atlantic “dipole”. Correlations between Sahel and Guinea Coast rainfall are also significantly negative. After 1970, the Sahel-Guinea Coast rainfall correlations are no longer significant, and the ENSO-SST mode becomes the only one significantly correlated with Sahel rainfall, especially due to the impact of warm events. The partial correlations between the ENSO-SST mode and the Sahel rainfall index, when the influence of the other SST modes are eliminated, are significant over all the 20-year running periods between 1945 and 1993, suggesting that this summer teleconnection could be modulated by the decadal scale SST background. The NCEP/NCAR reanalyses reproduce accurately the interannual variability of the atmospheric circulation after 1968. In particular a regional West African Monsoon Index (WAMI), combining wind speed anomalies at 925 and 200 hPa, is highly correlated with the July-September Sahel rainfall index. A warm ENSO event is associated both with an eastward mean sea level pressure gradient between the eastern tropical Pacific and the tropical Atlantic and with a northward pressure gradient along the western coast of West Africa. This pattern leads to enhanced trade winds over the tropical Atlantic and to weaker moisture advection over West Africa, consistent with a weaker monsoon system strength and a weaker Southern Hemisphere Hadley circulation. The NCEP/NCAR reanalyses do not reproduce accurately the decadal variability of the atmospheric circulation over West Africa because of artifical biases. Therefore the impact of the decadal scale pattern of the atmospheric circulation has been investigated with atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM) sensitivity experiments, by forcing the ARPEGE-Climat model with different combinations of an El Nino-like SST pattern with the pattern of the main mode of decadal scale SST variability where the hightest weights are located in the Pacific and Indian basins. AGCM outputs show that the decadal scale SST variations weakly affect Sahel rainfall variability but that they do induce an indirect effect on Sahel rainfall by enhancing the impact of the warm ENSO phases after 1980, through an increase in the fill-in of the monsoon trough and a moisture advection deficit over West Africa.
I Poccard - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
-
summer Sahel enso teleconnection and decadal time scale sst variations
Climate Dynamics, 2001Co-Authors: Serge Janicot, S Trzaska, I PoccardAbstract:The correlation between Sahel rainfall and El Nino–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in the northern summer has been varying for the last fifty years. We propose that the existence of periods of weak or strong relationship could result from an interaction with the global decadal scale sea surface temperature (SST) background. The main modes of SST variability have been extracted through a principal component analysis with Varimax rotation. The correlations between a July-September Sahel rainfall index and these SST modes have been computed on a 20-year running window between 1945 and 1993. The correlations with the interannual ENSO-SST mode are negative, not significant in the 1960s during the transition period from the wet climate phasis to the long-running drought in the Sahel, but then were significant since 1976. During the former period, the correlations between the Sahel rainfall index and the other SST modes (expressing mostly on quasi and multi-decadal scales) are the highest, in particular correlations with the tropical Atlantic “dipole”. Correlations between Sahel and Guinea Coast rainfall are also significantly negative. After 1970, the Sahel-Guinea Coast rainfall correlations are no longer significant, and the ENSO-SST mode becomes the only one significantly correlated with Sahel rainfall, especially due to the impact of warm events. The partial correlations between the ENSO-SST mode and the Sahel rainfall index, when the influence of the other SST modes are eliminated, are significant over all the 20-year running periods between 1945 and 1993, suggesting that this summer teleconnection could be modulated by the decadal scale SST background. The NCEP/NCAR reanalyses reproduce accurately the interannual variability of the atmospheric circulation after 1968. In particular a regional West African Monsoon Index (WAMI), combining wind speed anomalies at 925 and 200 hPa, is highly correlated with the July-September Sahel rainfall index. A warm ENSO event is associated both with an eastward mean sea level pressure gradient between the eastern tropical Pacific and the tropical Atlantic and with a northward pressure gradient along the western coast of West Africa. This pattern leads to enhanced trade winds over the tropical Atlantic and to weaker moisture advection over West Africa, consistent with a weaker monsoon system strength and a weaker Southern Hemisphere Hadley circulation. The NCEP/NCAR reanalyses do not reproduce accurately the decadal variability of the atmospheric circulation over West Africa because of artifical biases. Therefore the impact of the decadal scale pattern of the atmospheric circulation has been investigated with atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM) sensitivity experiments, by forcing the ARPEGE-Climat model with different combinations of an El Nino-like SST pattern with the pattern of the main mode of decadal scale SST variability where the hightest weights are located in the Pacific and Indian basins. AGCM outputs show that the decadal scale SST variations weakly affect Sahel rainfall variability but that they do induce an indirect effect on Sahel rainfall by enhancing the impact of the warm ENSO phases after 1980, through an increase in the fill-in of the monsoon trough and a moisture advection deficit over West Africa.
-
summer Sahel enso teleconnection and decadal time scale sst variations
Climate Dynamics, 2001Co-Authors: Serge Janicot, S Trzaska, I PoccardAbstract:The correlation between Sahel rainfall and El Nino–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) in the northern summer has been varying for the last fifty years. We propose that the existence of periods of weak or strong relationship could result from an interaction with the global decadal scale sea surface temperature (SST) background. The main modes of SST variability have been extracted through a principal component analysis with Varimax rotation. The correlations between a July-September Sahel rainfall index and these SST modes have been computed on a 20-year running window between 1945 and 1993. The correlations with the interannual ENSO-SST mode are negative, not significant in the 1960s during the transition period from the wet climate phasis to the long-running drought in the Sahel, but then were significant since 1976. During the former period, the correlations between the Sahel rainfall index and the other SST modes (expressing mostly on quasi and multi-decadal scales) are the highest, in particular correlations with the tropical Atlantic “dipole”. Correlations between Sahel and Guinea Coast rainfall are also significantly negative. After 1970, the Sahel-Guinea Coast rainfall correlations are no longer significant, and the ENSO-SST mode becomes the only one significantly correlated with Sahel rainfall, especially due to the impact of warm events. The partial correlations between the ENSO-SST mode and the Sahel rainfall index, when the influence of the other SST modes are eliminated, are significant over all the 20-year running periods between 1945 and 1993, suggesting that this summer teleconnection could be modulated by the decadal scale SST background. The NCEP/NCAR reanalyses reproduce accurately the interannual variability of the atmospheric circulation after 1968. In particular a regional West African Monsoon Index (WAMI), combining wind speed anomalies at 925 and 200 hPa, is highly correlated with the July-September Sahel rainfall index. A warm ENSO event is associated both with an eastward mean sea level pressure gradient between the eastern tropical Pacific and the tropical Atlantic and with a northward pressure gradient along the western coast of West Africa. This pattern leads to enhanced trade winds over the tropical Atlantic and to weaker moisture advection over West Africa, consistent with a weaker monsoon system strength and a weaker Southern Hemisphere Hadley circulation. The NCEP/NCAR reanalyses do not reproduce accurately the decadal variability of the atmospheric circulation over West Africa because of artifical biases. Therefore the impact of the decadal scale pattern of the atmospheric circulation has been investigated with atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM) sensitivity experiments, by forcing the ARPEGE-Climat model with different combinations of an El Nino-like SST pattern with the pattern of the main mode of decadal scale SST variability where the hightest weights are located in the Pacific and Indian basins. AGCM outputs show that the decadal scale SST variations weakly affect Sahel rainfall variability but that they do induce an indirect effect on Sahel rainfall by enhancing the impact of the warm ENSO phases after 1980, through an increase in the fill-in of the monsoon trough and a moisture advection deficit over West Africa.
Sharon E Nicholson - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
-
on the question of the recovery of the rains in the west african Sahel
Journal of Arid Environments, 2005Co-Authors: Sharon E NicholsonAbstract:Abstract Various reports have suggested that there has been a “recovery” of the rainy season in Sahelian West Africa in recent years. In this study, rainfall time series for West Africa are updated to the year 2003 by using rainfall estimates from the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM). Emphasis is on the period 1998–2003. Analyses include time series for eight zones, in the latitudes from 12°N to 20°N; maps of seasonal and August rainfall in these years; and various measures of the seasonal cycle. A comparison is made with the prolonged periods of wetter and drier conditions than prevailed earlier in the century: the extreme wet decade of the 1950s and the 30-year climatological “normal” for the very dry period 1968–97. Results show that there has been some recovery with respect to this very dry period. The recovery was generally weaker in August (which is generally the wettest month) than during the season as a whole. The recovery was most marked in the western Sahel. The exception was the northern-most zone (the Saharan margin, 18–20°N), which remained relatively dry. In the three zones to the south seasonal totals exceeded the long-term mean in all years and conditions were comparable to or wetter than those occurring during the wet decade of the 1950s. The wettest years were 1998, 1999 and 2003. The results also suggest a limited recovery in the eastern Sahel/Soudan. Rainfall returned to pre-drought levels in the two southern-most Sahel zones (12–16°N), but in the two northern zones (16–20°N), the drought appears to have intensified. In the southern-most zone (the central Sahel, 12–14°N), conditions in recent years seem to have been particularly favorable and comparable to the 1950s and 1960s. August trends were markedly similar to these seasonal trends. As in the western region, the wettest years were 1998, 1999 and 2003, but only 2000 was markedly drier than the other five.
-
an analysis of recent rainfall conditions in west africa including the rainy seasons of the 1997 el nino and the 1998 la nina years
Journal of Climate, 2000Co-Authors: Sharon E Nicholson, B Some, B KoneAbstract:Abstract This article examines recent rainfall conditions throughout the Sahel and in other parts of West Africa in detail and presents an overview of changes in rainfall on timescales of decades for Africa as a whole. In West Africa, there has been a pattern of continued aridity since the late 1960s that is most persistent in the more western regions. Some recovery occurred in the easternmost sectors during the 1990s, with rainfall in some years being near or just above the long-term mean. Dry conditions continued during 1997, but that year was not unusually dry compared to others of the last two decades. Hence, it appears that the 1997 El Nino did not have a large impact in the region. A preliminary analysis suggests that in 1998 rainfall was still below the long-term mean in most of the Sahel, but the central Sahel of Niger experienced localized flooding due to high rainfall in September. Throughout the region, the wettest years of the last decades were 1978, 1988, 1994, and possibly 1998, but conditio...
-
land surface processes and Sahel climate
Reviews of Geophysics, 2000Co-Authors: Sharon E NicholsonAbstract:This paper examines the question of land surface-atmosphere interactions in the West African Sahel and their role in the interannual variability of rainfall. In the Sahel, mean rainfall decreased by 25–40% between 1931–1960 and 1968–1997; every year in the 1950s was wet, and nearly every year since 1970 has been anomalously dry. Thus the intensity and multiyear persistence of drought conditions are unusual and perhaps unique features of Sahel climate. This article presents arguments for the role of land surface feedback in producing these features and reviews research relevant to land surface processes in the region, such as results from the 1992 Hydrologic Atmospheric Pilot Experiment (HAPEX)-Sahel experiment and recent studies on aerosols and on the issue of desertification in the region, a factor implicated by some as a cause of the changes in rainfall. Included also is a summary of evidence of feedback on meteorological processes, presented from both model results and observations. The reviewed studies demonstrate numerous ways in which the state of the land surface can influence interactions with the atmosphere. Surface hydrology essentially acts to delay and prolong the effects of meteorological drought. Each evaporative component of the surface water balance has its own timescale, with the presence of vegetation affecting the process both by delaying and prolonging the return of soil moisture to the atmosphere but at the same time accelerating the process through the evaporation of canopy-intercepted water. Hence the vegetation structure, including rooting depth, can modulate the land-atmosphere interaction. Such processes take on particular significance in the Sahel, where there is a high degree of recycling of atmospheric moisture and where the meteorological processes from the scale of boundary layer development to mesoscale disturbance generation are strongly influenced by moisture. Simple models of these feedback processes and their various timescales have demonstrated that the net feedback to the atmosphere is positive for both wet and dry surface anomalies. Hence the role of the surface is to reinforce meteorologically induced changes. Recovery from the dry state is slower than from the wet state, suggesting that dry conditions would tend to persist longer, as is actually observed in the Sahel. These simple models suggest that the surface hydrology locks the system into a drought mode that persists for several years, until the system randomly slips into a persistent wet mode. The hypothesis that desertification in the Sahel might likewise be responsible for the persistent drought is found to be untenable. Rather than a progressive encroachment of the desert onto the savanna, the vegetation cover responds dramatically to interannual fluctuations in rainfall. There is little evidence of large-scale denudation of soils, increase in surface albedo, or reduction of the productivity of the land, although degradation has probably occurred in some areas. There has, however, been a steady buildup of dust in the region over the last half a century. Significant radiative effects of the dust have been demonstrated; therefore the dust has probably influenced large-scale climate. The buildup is probably mainly a result of changes in the land surface that accompanied the shift to drier conditions, but it may have been exacerbated by anthropogenic factors. Complex general circulation models nearly universally underscore the importance of feedback processes in the region. Although it has not been unequivocally demonstrated that the rainfall regime of the Sahel is modulated by surface processes, there is recent observational evidence that this is case.
-
the diurnal and seasonal cycles of wind borne dust over africa north of the equator
Journal of Applied Meteorology, 1997Co-Authors: Ntchayi G Mbourou, J J Bertrand, Sharon E NicholsonAbstract:Abstract This article presents a study of the diurnal and seasonal cycles of dust over North Africa, using surface visibility as an indicator of dust. The diurnal cycle shows a reduction of visibility during the daytime hours in the areas where dust is generated, a consequence of the elimination of the nocturnal inversion. The annual cycle reveals that, at latitudes from 5° to 16°N, there is a latitudinal increase in the duration of the presence of aerosols over the course of the year. The presence of aerosols dimishes in the latitudes from 20° to 35°N, indicating that the aerosol content of the Saharan air is lower than that over the semiarid sub-Saharan zones, such as the Sahel. A comparison of three periods, 1957–61, 1970–74, and 1983–87, shows a continually increasing presence of dust, particularly in the western Sahel. The interannual variability of the dust and its annual cycles in these three periods throughout North Africa bear a strong relationship to rainfall fluctuations in the Sahel. Overall, ...
Alessandra Giannini - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
-
a climate model based review of drought in the Sahel desertification the re greening and climate change
Global and Planetary Change, 2008Co-Authors: Alessandra Giannini, Michela Biasutti, Michel M VerstraeteAbstract:We review the evidence that connects drought and desertification in the Sahel with climate change past, present and future. Advances in climate modeling point to the oceans, not land, as the cause of the recent persistence of drought in the Sahel. The current generation of global climate models reproduces the spatial extent, continental in scale, and the timing and duration of the shift to dry conditions that occurred in the late 1960's given knowledge of observed surface oceanic conditions only. The pattern statistically and dynamically associated with drought is one of warming of the tropical oceans, especially the Pacific and Indian Oceans, superimposed on an enhanced warming of the southern compared to the northern hemisphere most evident in the Atlantic. These models, which include a prognostic description of land surface and/or vegetation, albeit crude, indicate that positive feedbacks between precipitation and land surface/cover may act to amplify the ocean-forced component of continental climate. Despite the advances made in understanding the recent past, uncertainty dominates as we move forward in time, to the present, partial greening of the Sahel, and to the future of climate change projections.
-
sst forcings and Sahel rainfall variability in simulations of the twentieth and twenty first centuries
Journal of Climate, 2008Co-Authors: Michela Biasutti, Adam H Sobel, Isaac M Held, Alessandra GianniniAbstract:The outlook for Sahel precipitation in coupled simulations of the twenty-first century is very uncertain, with different models disagreeing even on the sign of the trends. Such disagreement is especially surprising in light of the robust response of the same coupled models to the twentieth-century forcings. This study presents a statistical analysis of the preindustrial, twentieth-century and twenty-first-century A1B scenario simulations in the latest Coupled Model Intercomparison Project 3 (CMIP3) dataset; it shows that the relationship that links Sahel rainfall anomalies to tropical sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies at interannual time scales in observations is reproduced by most models, independently of the change in the basic state as the world warms. The same SST‐Sahel relationship can be used to predict the simulated twentieth-century changes in Sahel rainfall from each model’s simulation of changes in Indo-Pacific SST and Atlantic SST meridional gradient, although the prediction overestimates the simulated trends. Conversely, such a relationship does not explain the rainfall trend in the twenty-first century in a majority of models. These results are consistent with there being, in most models, a substantial direct positive effect of atmospheric greenhouse gases on Sahel rainfall, not mediated through SST.
-
robust Sahel drying in response to late 20th century forcings
Geophysical Research Letters, 2006Co-Authors: Michela Biasutti, Alessandra GianniniAbstract:[1] The African Sahel experienced severe drying between the 1950s and the 1980s, with partial recovery since. We compare Sahel rainfall in the 20th century, pre-industrial, and increased greenhouse gases (GHG) simulations produced for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The simulations forced by 20th century concentrations of aerosol and GHG reproduce (i) a global change in SST akin to that associated with Sahel drought and (ii) a correspondent drying of the Sahel. We conclude that late 20th century Sahel climate was significantly dryer than pre-industrial, and at least 30% of the drying was externally forced. Comparison between 20th century runs and runs forced by GHG alone reveals the key role of reflective aerosols: they force a gradient in SST that excites robust drying in the northern edge of the Atlantic Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) and in the Sahel.
-
oceanic forcing of Sahel rainfall on interannual to interdecadal time scales
Science, 2003Co-Authors: Alessandra Giannini, R Saravanan, Ping ChangAbstract:We present evidence, based on an ensemble of integrations with NSIPP1 (version 1 of the atmospheric general circulation model developed at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in the framework of the Seasonal-to-Interannual Prediction Project) forced only by the observed record of sea surface temperature from 1930 to 2000, to suggest that variability of rainfall in the Sahel results from the response of the African summer monsoon to oceanic forcing, amplified by land-atmosphere interaction. The recent drying trend in the semiarid Sahel is attributed to warmer-than-average low-latitude waters around Africa, which, by favoring the establishment of deep convection over the ocean, weaken the continental convergence associated with the monsoon and engender widespread drought from Senegal to Ethiopia.
