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Assessment of uncertainties in the response of the African monsoon precipitation to land use change simulated by a regional model

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Abstract

Land use and land cover (LULC) over Africa have changed substantially over the last 60 years and this change has been proposed to affect monsoon circulation and precipitation. This study examines the uncertainties of model simulated response in the African monsoon system and Sahel precipitation due to LULC change using a set of regional model simulations with different combinations of land surface and cumulus parameterization schemes. Although the magnitude of the response covers a broad range of values, most of the simulations show a decline in Sahel precipitation due to the expansion of pasture and croplands at the expense of trees and shrubs and an increase in surface air temperature. The relationship between the model responses to LULC change and the climatologists of the control simulations is also examined. Simulations that are climatologically too dry or too wet compared to observations and reanalyses have weak response to land use change because they are in moisture or energy limited regimes respectively. The ones that lie in between have stronger response to the LULC changes, showing a more significant role in land–atmosphere interactions. Much of the change in precipitation is related to changes in circulation, particularly to the response of the intensity and latitudinal position of the African Easterly Jet, which varies with the changes in meridional surface temperature gradients. The study highlights the need for measurements of the surface fluxes across the meridional cross-section of the Sahel to evaluate models and thereby allowing human impacts such as land use change on the monsoon to be projected more realistically.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank Dr. Yun Qian for his comments and suggestions. This research was supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy as part of the Regional and Global Climate Modeling Program and Earth System Modeling Program. Computing resources for the simulations are provided by the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) and Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF). The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is operated for DOE by Battelle Memorial Institute under Contract DE-AC05-76RLO1830. The UDel_AirT_Precip data are provided by the NOAA/OAR/ESRL PSD, Boulder, Colorado, USA, from their Web site at http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA, USA

    Samson Hagos, L. Ruby Leung, Maoyi Huang & Jin-Ho Yoon

  2. University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Yongkang Xue, Aaron Boone & Fernando de Sales

  3. University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA

    Naresh Neupane

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  1. Samson Hagos
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  2. L. Ruby Leung
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  3. Yongkang Xue
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  4. Aaron Boone
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  7. Maoyi Huang
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  8. Jin-Ho Yoon
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Correspondence to Samson Hagos.

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Hagos, S., Leung, L.R., Xue, Y. et al. Assessment of uncertainties in the response of the African monsoon precipitation to land use change simulated by a regional model. Clim Dyn 43, 2765–2775 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-014-2092-x

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