Uncertainty in future changes in Sahel precipitation

Event details

Abstract

Variations of the West African monsoon have strong impacts on Sahelian societies, on agriculture yield, drought and flooding risks, economy, among others. It is therefore extremely important to understanding how the West African monsoon could change in the future.

However, future changes in Sahel precipitation are uncertain. We use a storyline approach which seeks to identify alternative plausible evolutions of Sahel precipitation and their driving factors. We show that changes in North Atlantic and in Euro-Mediterranean temperatures explain up to 60% of the central Sahel precipitation change uncertainty. These results indicate that constraining the future warming of the North Atlantic and the Euro-Mediterranean areas could allow reduce uncertainty at projecting the future change of the Sahel precipitation.

Bio

Paul-Arthur Monerie is a senior research scientist at the University of Reading. He is working on seasonal to decadal climate prediction with focuses over the tropics and Asia, on effects of the North Atlantic Ocean worldwide. Paul-Arthur is also working on understanding how the West African Monsoon could change in the future, with a focus on the end of the 21st century. Paul-Arthur has done is PhD in France, in the research climate centre of Dijon, on the effect of climate on the West African monsoon. I was a PDRA in Toulouse (CERFACS) in 2014-2016 and was working on decadal climate variability and prediction with a high-resolution prediction model. He is a PDRA at the University of Reading since late 2016.

Enquiries

For enquiries please contact Rachel Frost

Ad0562@coventry.ac.uk

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