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| Titel |
European models reliability over West Africa: from seasonal forecasting to climate scenarios |
| VerfasserIn |
C. Caminade, A. Morse, A. Jones |
| Konferenz |
EGU General Assembly 2009
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| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
Englisch
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| Digitales Dokument |
PDF |
| Erschienen |
In: GRA - Volume 11 (2009) |
| Datensatznummer |
250024606
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| Zusammenfassung |
| The severe drought that stroke the Sahel during the 1970’s and the 1980’s had dramatic
consequences regarding to impacts in terms of food security and health. Improving the
prediction of the West African Monsoon (WAM) system and its impacts on health, water
resources and food security became a priority at all time scales, namely from seasonal
forecasting to longer climate change perspectives. However, the actual state of the
art General Circulation Model (GCM) mainly fail in reproducing key features of
the WAM when a full ocean-atmosphere coupled approach is considered. This
leads to strong uncertainties in simulated future rainfall changes over Africa at
the end of the 21st century. This work proposes to highlight the differences and
similarities of the GCM biases in both forecasting (seasonal to decadal) and climatic
approaches. This is carried out using seasonal and decadal forecasting outputs from the
ENSEMBLES project and climate historical runs from the CMIP3 dataset, used within
the IPCC fourth report assessment. Preliminary results highlight consistent warm
biases over the Gulf of Guinea, weak predictability of rainfall over the Sahel and
problems in reproducing precipitation / orography feedbacks. The major biases
highlighted in forecasting mode are generally similar to the ones depicted in climate
simulations. This leads to the intermediate conclusion that the GCM biases are
mainly related to their intrinsic parameterization whatever the approach considered. |
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