Publication Date
10-28-2024
Document Type
Article
Publication Title
Geophysical Research Letters
Volume
51
Issue
20
DOI
10.1029/2024GL110177
Abstract
The uncertainty in precipitation projections across the Sahel has persisted across generations of climate models. Many projections show a zonal dipole in the sign of precipitation change, with wetting across the Central Sahel and drying across the Western Sahel. We analyze the outputs from an ensemble of current climate models to explain why some produce this dipole and understand the inter-model variability in the transition region for these models. Models projecting the dipole tend to shift the Atlantic Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) to the south, while models that do not tend to shift the ITCZ to the north. We find that the strong relationship between the change in Sahel precipitation and surface temperature-based indices is highly driven by the non-dipole models. These indices do not explain most of the variance in where models transition. This suggests that understanding zonal variability in Sahel precipitation change must go beyond these temperature-based analysis.
Funding Number
CMIP6
Funding Sponsor
College of Sciences - Department of Ocean and Earth Sciences
Keywords
climate, CMIP6, intermodel variability, precipitation, sahel, west africa
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Department
Meteorology and Climate Science
Recommended Citation
E. O. Audu, R. D. Dixon, and I. Diallo. "Understanding the Zonal Variability in Projections of Sahel Precipitation" Geophysical Research Letters (2024). https://doi.org/10.1029/2024GL110177
