Uncertainty in simulating twentieth century West African precipitation trends: the role of anthropogenic aerosol emissions

Monerie, P.-A. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5304-9559, Dittus, A. J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9598-6869, Wilcox, L. J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5691-1493 and Turner, A. G. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0642-6876 (2023) Uncertainty in simulating twentieth century West African precipitation trends: the role of anthropogenic aerosol emissions. Earth's Future, 11 (2). e2022EF002995. ISSN 2328-4277 doi: 10.1029/2022EF002995

Abstract/Summary

Anthropogenic aerosol emissions from North America and Europe have strong effects on the decadal variability of the West African monsoon. Anthropogenic aerosol effective radiative forcing is model dependent, but the impact of such uncertainty on the simulation of long-term West African monsoon variability is unknown. We use an ensemble of simulations with HadGEM3-GC3.1 that span the most recent estimates in simulated anthropogenic aerosol effective radiative forcing. We show that uncertainty in anthropogenic aerosol radiative forcing leads to significant uncertainty at simulating multi-decadal trends in West African precipitation. At the large scale, larger forcing leads to a larger decrease in the interhemispheric temperature gradients, in temperature over both the North Atlantic Ocean and northern Sahara. There are also differences in dynamic changes specific to the West African monsoon (locations of the Saharan heat low and African Easterly Jet, of the strength of the West African westerly jet, and of African Easterly Wave activity). We also assess effects on monsoon precipitation characteristics and temperature. We show that larger aerosol forcing results in a decrease of the number of rainy days and of heavy and extreme precipitation events and warm spells. However, simulated changes in onset and demise dates do not appear to be sensitive to the magnitude of aerosol forcing. Our results demonstrate the importance of reducing the uncertainty in anthropogenic aerosol forcing for understanding and predicting multi-decadal variability in the West African monsoon.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/109941
Identification Number/DOI	10.1029/2022EF002995
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > NCAS Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > Department of Meteorology
Publisher	Wiley
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