Multimodel ensemble simulations of present and future climates over West Africa: Impacts of vegetation dynamics
West Africa (WA) is one of the most vulnerable regions to climate change with a dominantly rain‐fed agriculture and a population that is highly susceptible to drought‐induced famine. The societal sustainability of the region is acutely sensitive to future climate and adaptation strategies depends on reliable prediction of climate trends. However, Global Climate Models provide a rather uncertain outlook for the future rainfall in the region, leaving the question of “drier or wetter Sahel?” a topic of continued debate.
In this project, we evaluated the uncertainties related to the GCM forcings using the conventional Multi‐Model Ensemble (MME) approach. Moreover, we studied the impact of including vegetation dynamics on model performance in simulating present‐day climate and on future climate projections over West Africa. The results demonstrate substantial sensitivity of the simulated precipitation, evapotranspiration, and soil moisture to vegetation representation. For present‐day climate, the ensemble average generally outperforms individual members due to cancelation of model biases. For future changes, although the original GCMs project contradicting future rainfall trends over West Africa, the RCMs‐produced trends are generally consistent. The multimodel ensemble projects significant decreases of rainfall over a major portion of West Africa and significant increases over eastern Sahel and East Africa.
Here is a list of some of the tools and concepts I used in this project:
- Numerical Weather Prediction models, RCMs, GCMs, experiment design
- Geospatial Data Analysis, Time Series, Probability, Hypothesis testing
- Model skill, bias, variability, uncertainty, ensemble modeling
- Seasonal and inter-annual variability, Atmospheric variability, climate change
- Terrestrial ecosystem modeling, Vegetation/Precipitation interactions, Ecosystem Dynamics and Carbon-Nitrogen cycles