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West African monsoon decadal variability and surface-related forcings: second West African Monsoon Modeling and Evaluation Project Experiment (WAMME II)

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Abstract

The second West African Monsoon Modeling and Evaluation Project Experiment (WAMME II) is designed to improve understanding of the possible roles and feedbacks of sea surface temperature (SST), land use land cover change (LULCC), and aerosols forcings in the Sahel climate system at seasonal to decadal scales. The project’s strategy is to apply prescribed observationally based anomaly forcing, i.e., “idealized but realistic” forcing, in simulations by climate models. The goal is to assess these forcings’ effects in producing/amplifying seasonal and decadal climate variability in the Sahel between the 1950s and the 1980s, which is selected to characterize the great drought period of the last century. This is the first multi-model experiment specifically designed to simultaneously evaluate such relative contributions. The WAMME II models have consistently demonstrated that SST forcing is a major contributor to the twentieth century Sahel drought. Under the influence of the maximum possible SST forcing, the ensemble mean of WAMME II models can produce up to 60 % of the precipitation difference during the period. The present paper also addresses the role of SSTs in triggering and maintaining the Sahel drought. In this regard, the consensus of WAMME II models is that both Indian and Pacific Ocean SSTs greatly contributed to the drought, with the former producing an anomalous displacement of the Intertropical Convergence Zone before the WAM onset, and the latter mainly contributes to the summer WAM drought. The WAMME II models also show that the impact of LULCC forcing on the Sahel climate system is weaker than that of SST forcing, but still of first order magnitude. According to the results, under LULCC forcing the ensemble mean of WAMME II models can produces about 40 % of the precipitation difference between the 1980s and the 1950s. The role of land surface processes in responding to and amplifying the drought is also identified. The results suggest that catastrophic consequences are likely to occur in the regional Sahel climate when SST anomalies in individual ocean basins and in land conditions combine synergistically to favor drought.

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Notes

  1. For convenience, when we use the word “oceans” in this paper the Mediterranean Sea will be included.

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Acknowledgement

We appreciate AMMA’s support for the WAMME project, including use of the AMMA database for the WAMME II experiment. The WAMME activity and analysis are supported by U.S. NSF Grants AGS-1115506 and AGS-1419526. Each WAMME model group’s efforts are supported by U.S. NSF and NASA, the European Union, and other funding agencies. A number of WAMME models simulations were conducted with the NCAR Supercomputers.

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    Authors and Affiliations

    1. University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

      Yongkang Xue, Carlos R. Mechoso, Kathleen Schiro, Suosuo Li, Guoqiong Song, Yu Gu & Zhengqiu Zhang

    2. San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, USA

      Fernando De Sales

    3. University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

      William K.-M. Lau, Ning Zeng & Eugenia Kalnay

    4. Centre National de Recherches Météorologiques, Météo-France, Toulouse, France

      Aaron Boone

    5. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA

      Kyu-Myong Kim, Young-Kwon Lim, Sarith Mahanama, Mian Chin & Siegfried Schubert

    6. University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA

      Guiling Wang

    7. The International Center for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy

      Fred Kucharski

    8. Meteorological Research Institute, Tsukuba, Japan

      Masahiro Hosaka

    9. Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou, China

      Suosuo Li

    10. NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University, New York, NY, USA

      Leonard M. Druyan

    11. AGRHYMET Regional Center and Abdou Moumouni University, Niamey, Niger

      Ibrah Seidou Sanda

    12. National Center for Environmental Prediction, College Park, MD, USA

      Wassila Thiaw & Cheng-Hsuan Lu

    13. Met Office Hadley Centre, Exeter, UK

      Ruth E. Comer

    14. Goddard Earth Sciences Technology and Research, I. M. Systems Group, Greenbelt, MD, USA

      Young-Kwon Lim

    15. Center for Ocean-Land-Atmosphere Interactions Studies, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

      Paul Dirmeyer

    16. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA, USA

      Samson M. Hagos & L. Ruby Leung

    17. University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Japan

      Akio Kitoh

    18. University at Albany, State University of New York, Albany, NY, USA

      Cheng-Hsuan Lu

    19. Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA

      Natalie M. Mahowald

    20. Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences, Beijing, China

      Zhengqiu Zhang

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    1. Yongkang Xue
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    Correspondence to Yongkang Xue.

    Additional information

    This paper is a contribution to the special issue on West African climate decadal variability and its modeling, consisting of papers from the West African Monsoon Modeling and Evaluation (WAMME) and the African Multidisciplinary Monsoon Analyses (AMMA) projects, and coordinated by Yongkang Xue, Serge Janicot, and William Lau. Provided Funding information has to be tagged.

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    Appendix

    Appendix

    See Figs. 15, 16 and 17.

    Fig. 15
    figure 15

    Comparison of JJAS precipitation difference between the 1980s and the 1950s from different observational data sets (mm day−1)

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    Fig. 16
    figure 16

    JJAS anomaly precipitation (mm day−1) due to Atlantic SST anomaly

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    Fig. 17
    figure 17

    JJAS anomaly precipitation (mm day−1) due to Mediterranean SST anomaly

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    Xue, Y., De Sales, F., Lau, W.KM. et al. West African monsoon decadal variability and surface-related forcings: second West African Monsoon Modeling and Evaluation Project Experiment (WAMME II). Clim Dyn 47, 3517–3545 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-016-3224-2

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