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Interdecadal variation of the West African summer monsoon during 1979–2010 and associated variability

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Abstract

This paper addresses the interdecadal variation of the West African summer monsoon (WASM) along with its background of atmospheric circulation and possible physical mechanism over the past 32 years (1979–2010). It is indicated that the WASM starts to strengthen from 1998 as the rainfall begins to increase over western West Africa on the whole, which shows a new interdecadal variation. In this interdecadal variation, the strengthened ascending motion corresponding to enhanced divergence (convergence) movement on the upper (lower) troposphere is prone to develop the local circulation of the monsoon. Moreover, the strengthened southwestern (eastern) wind on the lower (upper) level leads to more moisture from the Atlantic and the Gulf of Guinea transported to the West African continent. In addition, the summer subtropical high over the north Atlantic and western West Africa is strong and northward, and the tropical east wind is also strong. Statistically, the weaker (stronger) the spring North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) is, the stronger (weaker) the tropical easterly is, and then the WASM is also stronger. But the effect of the NAO on the decadal variation of the WASM is not so significant from the north Atlantic anomaly sensitivity simulation with a single model. This is also an indication that the relationship between the WASM and NAO is complicated in an interdecadal time scale and is needed further study. In terms of sea surface temperature (SST) variation, the tendency is toward warming in the subtropical north Pacific, the south Pacific and north Atlantic. Numerical simulation experiments and data analysis show that the SST variation in the north Pacific plays an important role in the latest interdecadal strengthening of the WASM during the past 32 years, while the influences of the south Pacific and the north Atlantic SST anomalies are not so significant to the associated atmospheric circulation changes.

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Acknowledgments

This work is supported jointly by the National Key Program for Developing Basic Sciences (2009CB421406), Norwegian Research Council “East Asia DecCen” Project, the Knowledge Innovation Project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences under Grant No. KZCX2-YW-QN202,and National Key Research Plans of global climate change (2010CB950304). We wish to thank the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Nansen-Zhu International Research Centre, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100029, China

    Huanlian Li & Huijun Wang

  2. Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Huanlian Li

  3. Climate Change Research Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100029, China

    Huanlian Li & Huijun Wang

  4. Center for Earth System Science, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

    Yizhou Yin

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  1. Huanlian Li
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  2. Huijun Wang
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Correspondence to Huanlian Li.

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Li, H., Wang, H. & Yin, Y. Interdecadal variation of the West African summer monsoon during 1979–2010 and associated variability. Clim Dyn 39, 2883–2894 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-012-1426-9

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