Oceanic forcing of the late 20th century Sahel drought.
Open accessAbstract
The Sahel region of Africa underwent a pronounced interdecadal drying trend in the latter half of the 20th century. In order to investigate this drying trend, several ensembles of numerical experiments are conducted using a recently developed atmospheric general circulation model (AM2, developed at NOAA's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory). When the model is forced with the time series of observed SSTs and sea ice from 1950 to 2000, it successfully reproduces the observed interdecadal variability of Sahelian rainfall. Additional experiments are used to estimate the separate contributions to Sahel drought from SST anomalies in various ocean basins. In these, SST anomalies are applied only in the tropics, or only in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans separately. Forcing from the tropical oceans is dominant in driving the Sahelian rainfall trend. The response of Sahel rainfall to a general warming of the tropical oceans suggests a possible link to greenhouse gas‐induced climate change.
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The observed drought tendency following the 1960s has been well reproduced with models only forced by observed SST.
“Indeed, this observed drought tendency following the 1960s has been well reproduced with models only forced by observed SST (Giannini et al. 2003;Paeth and Hense 2004;Lu and Delworth 2005;Tippett 2006; Tippett and Giannini 2006).”
From Tropical Atlantic variability modes (1979-2002). Part I: Time-evolving SST modes related to West African rainfall (2008) · cites this paper as Lu and Delworth 2005
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Cites
Some simple solutions for heat‐induced tropical circulation
Gill, A. E. (1980) · Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society · doi:10.1002/qj.49710644905 · Cited by 4,394 · see citing works
Oceanic forcing of Sahel rainfall on interannual to interdecadal time scales.
Giannini, A., Saravanan, R., & Chang, P. (2003) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1089357 · Cited by 1,058 · see citing works
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Research works printed but not linked: 2
- Delworth, T. L., et al. (2005), GFDL's CM2 global coupled climate models- part 1: Formulation and simulation characteristics, J. Clim., in press.
- Hoerling, M. P., J. W. Hurrell, and J. Eischeid (2005), Impact of greenhouse warming on the West African summer monsoon, J. Clim., in press.
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Climate impacts of the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation
Knight, J. R., Folland, C. K., & Scaife, A. A. (2006) · Geophysical Research Letters · doi:10.1029/2006gl026242 · Cited by 1,209 · see citing works
Sahel rainfall and decadal to multi-decadal sea surface temperature variability
Mohino, E., Janicot, S., & Bader, J. (2011) · Climate Dynamics · doi:10.1007/s00382-010-0867-2 · Cited by 306 · see citing works
Polo, I., Rodríguez-Fonseca, B., Losada, T., & García-Serrano, J. (2008) · Journal of Climate · doi:10.1175/2008jcli2607.1 · Cited by 155 · see citing works
Knutson, T. R., & Zeng, F. (2018) · Journal of Climate · doi:10.1175/jcli-d-17-0672.1 · Cited by 70 · see citing works
Omondi, P., Ogallo, L. A., Anyah, R., Muthama, J. M., & Ininda, J. (2013) · International Journal of Climatology · doi:10.1002/joc.3578 · Cited by 60 · see citing works
Potentially Predictable Components of African Summer Rainfall in an SST-Forced GCM Simulation
Tippett, M. K., & Giannini, A. (2006) · Journal of Climate · doi:10.1175/jcli3779.1 · Cited by 29 · see citing works
- Authors
- Lu, J., & Delworth, T. L.
- Affiliations
- NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (US)
- Venue
- Geophysical Research Letters
- Publisher
- American Geophysical Union (AGU)
- Published
- 2005-11
- Volume
- 32
- Issue
- 22
- ISSN
- 0094-8276 (ISSN-L)
- 1944-8007
- OpenAlex
- W2163735789
- Cited by
- 191
- References
- 2
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 3 · 2022: 6 · 2021: 11 · 2020: 19 · 2019: 5 · 2018: 10 · 2017: 11 · 2016: 18 · 2015: 13 · 2014: 11 · 2013: 13 · 2012: 10
- FWCI
- 6.03
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Geophysical Research Letters (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Climate variability and models
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Hydrology and Drought Analysis
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Atmospheric Science › Geology and Paleoclimatology Research
- Keywords
- Sahel drought, sea surface temperature anomalies, ocean-atmosphere interaction, Atlantic Ocean, Indian Ocean, Pacific Ocean, global warming
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