Journal Articles npj climate and atmospheric science Year : 2021

The fast response of Sahel precipitation to climate change allows effective mitigation action.

Benjamin Pohl
Marco Gaetani

Abstract

Climate change will drive major perturbations of the West African summer monsoon. A zonal contrast in precipitation will develop at the end of the century, with an increase in precipitation over the central Sahel and a decrease in precipitation over the western Sahel. Such a zonal contrast results from the antagonist effects of the fast (due to enhanced radiative warming over land, and over the North Hemisphere, relative to the South Hemisphere) and slow (associated with long-term changes in oceanic circulation) responses of precipitation to increasing greenhouse gases. While such changes have already been assessed, less attention has been given to their temporality, an issue of major importance to promote efficient mitigation and adaptation measures. Here, we analyse the future evolution of precipitation changes decomposed into a fast and a slow response, showing that the fast response dominates the slow one. From this evidence, we highlight that mitigation strategies may be successful at reducing the effect of climate change on Sahel precipitation within a few decades, by muting the fast response. This decomposition also allows for a better understanding of the uncertainty of climate model predictions in Africa.

Domains

Climatology
Fichier principal
Vignette du fichier
MPG2021.pdf (1) Télécharger le fichier
Origin Publisher files allowed on an open archive

Dates and versions

hal-03215865 , version 1 (04-10-2022)

Identifiers

Cite

Paul-Arthur Monerie, Benjamin Pohl, Marco Gaetani. The fast response of Sahel precipitation to climate change allows effective mitigation action.. npj climate and atmospheric science, 2021, 4 (1), pp.24. ⟨10.1038/s41612-021-00179-6⟩. ⟨hal-03215865⟩
34 View
16 Download

Altmetric

Share

More