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Simulated changes in the relationship between tropical ocean temperatures and the western African monsoon during the mid-Holocene

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Abstract

Results from nine coupled ocean-atmosphere simulations have been used to investigate changes in the relationship between the variability of monsoon precipitation over western Africa and tropical sea surface temperatures (SSTs) between the mid-Holocene and the present day. Although the influence of tropical SSTs on the African monsoon is generally overestimated in the control simulations, the models reproduce aspects of the observed modes of variability. Thus, most models reproduce the observed negative correlation between western Sahelian precipitation and SST anomalies in the eastern tropical Pacific, and many of them capture the positive correlation between SST anomalies in the eastern tropical Atlantic and precipitation over the Guinea coastal region. Although the response of individual model to the change in orbital forcing between 6 ka and present differs somewhat, eight of the models show that the strength of the teleconnection between SSTs in the eastern tropical Pacific and Sahelian precipitation is weaker in the mid-Holocene. Some of the models imply that this weakening was associated with a shift towards longer time periods (from 3–5 years in the control simulations toward 4–10 years in the mid-Holocene simulations). The simulated reduction in the teleconnection between eastern tropical Pacific SSTs and Sahelian precipitation appears to be primarily related to a reduction in the atmospheric circulation bridge between the Pacific and West Africa but, depending on the model, other mechanisms such as increased importance of other modes of tropical ocean variability or increased local recycling of monsoonal precipitation can also play a role.

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Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the participating modeling groups for providing their data for analysis, and the Laboratoire des Sciences du Climat et de l’Environnement (LSCE) for collecting and archiving the model data. We would like to thank Jean-Yves Peterschmitt for his help in extracting the model fields. The PMIP2/MOTIF Data Archive is supported by CEA, CNRS, the EU project MOTIF (EVK2-CT-2002−00153) and the Programme National d’Etude de la Dynamique du Climat (PNEDC). The analyses were performed using the version 13/01/2006 of the database. More information on the simulations is available on http://www-lsce.cea.fr/pmip/ and http://www-lsce.cea.fr/motif/. This paper is a contribution to the MOTIF project (EVK2-CT-2002-00153). We are grateful to B. Fontaine and P. Camberlin from the Centre de Recherches de Climatologie, Dijon, for their constructive comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.

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  1. IPSL/Laboratoire de Sciences du climat et de l’environnement, Unité mixte CEA-CNRS, Orme des Merisiers, bât. 709, 91191, Gif-sur-Yvette, France

    Y. Zhao, P. Braconnot, P. Yiou & O. Marti

  2. School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, BS8 1SS, UK

    Y. Zhao & S. P. Harrison

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  1. Y. Zhao
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Correspondence to Y. Zhao.

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Zhao, Y., Braconnot, P., Harrison, S.P. et al. Simulated changes in the relationship between tropical ocean temperatures and the western African monsoon during the mid-Holocene. Clim Dyn 28, 533–551 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-006-0196-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-006-0196-7

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