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Article Dans Une Revue Atmosphere Année : 2020

Warm Rain in Southern West Africa: A Case Study at Savè

Résumé

A warm-rain episode over southern West Africa is analyzed using unprecedented X-band radar observations from Savè, Benin and a Large-Eddy Simulation (LES) over a 240 × 240 km 2 domain. While warm rain contributes to 1% of the total rainfall in the LES, its spatial extent accounts for 24% of the area covered by rainfall. Almost all the warm-rain cells tracked in the observation and the LES have a size between 2 and 10 km and a lifetime varying from 5 to 60 min. During the nighttime, warm-rain cells are caused by the dissipation of large deep-convection systems while during the daytime they are formed by the boundary-layer thermals. The vertical extension of the warm-rain cells is limited by vertical wind shear at their top. In the simulation, their top is 1.6 km higher with respect to the radar observations due to the large-scale environment given by wrong initial conditions. This study shows the challenge of simulating warm rain in southern West Africa, a key phenomenon during the little dry season.
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Dates et versions

hal-04253289 , version 1 (22-10-2023)

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Irene Reinares Martínez, Jean-Pierre Chaboureau, Jan Handwerker. Warm Rain in Southern West Africa: A Case Study at Savè. Atmosphere, 2020, 11 (3), pp.298. ⟨10.3390/atmos11030298⟩. ⟨hal-04253289⟩
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