Modelling Convection over West Africa

The dramatic change in the region of the West African Monsoon (WAM) from wet conditions in the 50s and 60s to much drier conditions from the 70s to the 90s represents one of the strongest inter–decadal signals on the planet in the 20th century. Marked inter-annual variations in the recent decades have resulted in extremely dry years with devastating environmental and socio-economic impacts. Vulnerability of West African societies to climate variability is likely to increase in the next decades as demands on resources increase due to the rapidly growing population. The situation may be exacerbated by the effects of climate change, land degradation, water pollution and biomass burning. Furthermore, the WAM has an impact on the downstream tropical Atlantic by providing the seedling disturbances for the majority of Atlantic tropical cyclones and on the global climate as one of the world’s largest source regions of mineral dust and of fire aerosol. Motivated by the need to develop strategies to reduce the socio–economic impacts of climate variability and change in the WAM, the integrated European project African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analysis (AMMA) aims to improve our knowledge and understanding of the WAM on daily to interannual timescales and thus improve our ability to forecast the weather and climate in the West African region.