University of Reading and National 

Centre for Atmospheric Science (UK)

10 am, April 10, 2024

 

Abstract: 

The West African Monsoon brings summer precipitation to around 80 million people from Senegal to Chad. The variability of the monsoon circulation has a large impact on Sahelian societies, including human health, agropastoral activities, agriculture, and the gross domestic product. Understanding, predicting, and projecting future variations of precipitation across the Sahel is, hence, an issue of major importance. However, future changes in precipitation are uncertain because of large differences among projections from various models. We explore the reasons for such a large uncertainty to help improve future projections of Sahel precipitation change. We show that differences in simulated changes in precipitation are due to how climate models simulate future changes in atmospheric circulation over West Africa. We build up this result by applying a Storyline approach to the Sahel precipitation change. We then highlight that the future changes in North Atlantic and Euro-Mediterranean temperatures are important drivers of future changes in Sahel precipitation and can help explain a substantial proportion (60%) of the inter-model spread in Sahel precipitation change.  

 

Bio: 

Dr. Paul-Arthur Monerie is a Senior Research Scientist at the University of Reading and National Centre for Atmospheric Science (UK). He has about 10 years of experience in climate science and expertise in seasonal-to-decadal climate variability and predictability and in understanding the effects of climate change on the West African climate. He completed his PhD at Burgundy University (France) on the effect of climate change on the West African monsoon before working as a postdoctoral fellow at CERFACS (France). He has been working at the University of Reading since 2016.