Northern-hemispheric differential warming is the key to understanding the discrepancies in the projected Sahel rainfall

Nature Communications

Volumn 6, Issue , 2015, Pages

  Park, Jong Yeon ^a,b   Bader, Jürgen ^a,c   Matei, Daniela ^a  

^a MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR METEOROLOGY   (Germany)

^b INTERNATIONAL MAX PLANCK RESEARCH SCHOOL ON EARTH SYSTEM MODELLING   (Germany)

^c BJERKNES CENTRE FOR CLIMATE RESEARCH   (Norway)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

RAIN;

CLIMATE MODELING; EXTRATROPICAL ENVIRONMENT; FUTURE PROSPECT; NORTHERN HEMISPHERE; RAINFALL; SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURE; SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS; TREND ANALYSIS; TROPICAL ENVIRONMENT; UNCERTAINTY ANALYSIS; WARMING;

ARTICLE; CLIMATE; DEVELOPING COUNTRY; GREENHOUSE EFFECT; MOISTURE; NORTHERN HEMISPHERE; PRECIPITATION; SEA SURFACE TEMPERATURE; STATISTICAL ANALYSIS;

SAHEL [SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA];

EID: 84955064088     PISSN: None     EISSN: 20411723     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1038/ncomms6985     Document Type: Article

References (41)

1. Biasutti, M., Held, I. M., Sobel, A. H. & Giannini, A. SST forcings and Sahel rainfall variability in simulations of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. J. Clim. 21, 3471-3486 (2008).
2. Cook, K. H. Climate science: the mysteries of Sahel droughts. Nat. Geosci. 1, 647-648 (2008).
3. Cook, K. H. & Vizy, E. K. Coupled model simulations of the west African monsoon system: twentieth- and Twenty-First-century simulations. J. Clim. 19, 3681-3703 (2006).
4. Douville, H., Salas-Melia, D. & Tyteca, S. On the tropical origin of uncertainties in the global land precipitation response to global warming. Clim. Dyn. 26, 367-385 (2006).
5. Caminade, C. & Terray, L. Twentieth century Sahel rainfall variability as simulated by the ARPEGE AGCM, and future changes. Clim. Dyn. 35, 75-94 (2010).
6. Joly, M., Voldoire, A., Douville, H., Terray, P. & Royer, J.-F. African monsoon teleconnections with tropical SSTs: validation and evolution in a set of IPCC4 simulations. Clim. Dyn. 29, 1-20 (2007).
7. Biasutti, M. & Giannini, A. Robust Sahel drying in response to late 20th century forcings. Geophys. Res. Lett. 33, L11706 (2006).
8. Bader, J. & Latif, M. The impact of decadal-scale Indian Ocean sea surface temperature anomalies on Sahelian rainfall and the North Atlantic oscillation. Geophys. Res. Lett. 30, 2169 (2003).
9. Giannini, A., Saravanan, R. & Chang, P. Oceanic forcing of Sahel rainfall on interannual to interdecadal time scales. Science 302, 1027-1030 (2003).
10. Haarsma, R. J., Selten, F. M., Weber, S. L. & Kliphuis, M. Sahel rainfall variability and response to greenhouse warming. Geophys. Res. Lett. 32, L17702 (2005).
11. Held, I. M., Delworth, T. L., Lu, J., Findell, K. L. & Knutson, T. R. Simulation of Sahel drought in the 20th and 21st centuries. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 102, 17891-17896 (2005).
12. Hoerling, M., Hurrell, J., Eischeid, J. & Phillips, A. Detection and attribution of twentieth-century northern and southern African rainfall change. J. Clim. 19, 3989-4008 (2006).
13. Zeng, N., Neelin, J. D., Lau, K. M. & Tucker, C. J. Enhancement of interdecadal climate variability in the Sahel by vegetation interaction. Science 286, 1537-1540 (1999).
14. Biasutti, M., Sobel, A. H. & Camargo, S. J. The role of the Sahara low in summertime Sahel rainfall variability and change in the CMIP3 models. J. Clim. 22, 5755-5771 (2009).
15. Giannini, A. Mechanisms of climate change in the semiarid African Sahel: the local view. J. Clim. 23, 743-756 (2010).
16. Biasutti, M. Forced Sahel rainfall trends in the CMIP5 archive. J. Geophys. Res. 118, 1613-1623 (2013).
17. Folland, C. K., Palmer, T. N. & Parker, D. E. Sahel rainfall and worldwide sea temperatures, 1901-85. Nature 320, 602-607 (1986).
18. Giannini, A. et al. A unifying view of climate change in the Sahel linking intra-seasonal, interannual and longer time scales. Environ. Res. Lett. 8, 024010 (2013).
19. Stevens, B. et al. Atmospheric component of the MPI-M Earth System Model: ECHAM6. J. Adv. Model. Earth Syst. 5, 146-172 (2013).
20. Neelin, J. D., Chou, C. & Su, H. Tropical drought regions in global warming and El Nino teleconnections. Geophys. Res. Lett. 30, 2275 (2003).
21. Chou, C. & Neelin, J. D. Mechanisms of global warming impacts on regional tropical precipitation. J. Clim. 17, 2688-2701 (2004).
22. Sobel, A. H., Held, I. M. & Bretherton, C. S. The ENSO signal in tropical tropospheric temperature. J. Clim. 15, 2702-2706 (2002).
23. Herceg, D., Sobel, A. H. & Sun, L. Regional modeling of decadal rainfall variability over the Sahel. Clim. Dyn. 29, 89-99 (2007).
24. Broccoli, A. J., Dahl, K. A. & Stouffer, R. J. Response of the ITCZ to Northern Hemisphere cooling. Geophys. Res. Lett. 33, L01702 (2006).
25. Kang, S. M., Held, I. M., Frierson, D. M. W. & Zhao, M. The response of the ITCZ to extratropical thermal forcing: idealized slab-ocean experiments with a GCM. J. Clim. 21, 3521-3532 (2008).
26. Liu, Y., Chiang, J. C., Chou, C. & Patricola, C. M. Atmospheric teleconnection mechanisms of extratropical North Atlantic SST influence on Sahel rainfall. Clim. Dyn. 43, 1-15 (2014).
27. Chou, C., Neelin, J. D. & Su, H. Ocean-atmosphere-land feedbacks in an idealized monsoon. Quart. J. Roy. Meteor. Soc. 127, 1869-1891 (2001).
28. Nicholson, S. E. A revised picture of the structure of the 'monsoon' and land ITCZ over West Africa. Clim. Dyn. 32, 1155-1171 (2009).
29. Grist, J. P. & Nicholson, S. E. A study of the dynamic factors influencing the rainfall variability in the West African Sahel. J. Clim. 14, 1337-1359 (2001).
30. Nicholson, S. E. The intensity, location and structure of the tropical rainbelt over west Africa as factors in interannual variability. Int. J. Climatol. 28, 1775-1785 (2008).
31. Pattanaik, D. R. & Satyan, V. Fluctuations of Tropical Easterly Jet during contrasting monsoons over India: a GCM study. Meteorol. Atmos. Phys. 75, 51-60 (2000).
32. Martin, E. R., Thorncroft, C. & Booth, B. B. B. The Multidecadal Atlantic SST-Sahel Rainfall Teleconnection in CMIP5 Simulations. J. Clim. 27, 784-806 (2014).
33. Sutton, R. T. & Hodson, D. L. R. Climate response to basin-scale warming and cooling of the North Atlantic Ocean. J. Clim. 20, 891-907 (2007).
34. Barandiaran, D. & Wang, S.-Y. The missing teleconnection between the North Atlantic and the Sahel precipitation in CFSv2. Atmos. Sci. Lett. 15, 21-28 (2014).
35. Matei, D. et al. Two tales of initializing decadal climate prediction experiments with the ECHAM5/MPI-OM model. J. Clim. 25, 8502-8523 (2012).
36. Taylor, K. E., Stouffer, R. J. & Meehl, G. A. An overview of CMIP5 and the experiment design. Bull. Am. Meteorol. Soc. 93, 485-498 (2012).
37. Dunne, J. P. et al. GFDL's ESM2 global coupled climate-carbon Earth System Models. Part I: physical formulation and baseline simulation characteristics. J. Clim. 25, 6646-6665 (2012).
38. Watanabe, S. et al. MIROC-ESM 2010: model description and basic results of CMIP5-20c3m experiments. Geosci. Model Dev. 4, 845-872 (2011).
39. Gaetani, M. & Mohino, E. Decadal prediction of the Sahelian precipitation in CMIP5 simulations. J. Clim. 26, 7708-7719 (2013).
40. Mohino, E., Janicot, S. & Bader, J. Sahel rainfall and decadal to multi-decadal sea surface temperature variability. Clim. Dyn. 37, 419-440 (2011).
41. Bader, J. & Latif, M. The 1983 drought in the West Sahel: a case study. Clim. Dyn. 36, 463-472 (2011).