Effects on early monsoon rainfall in West Africa due to  recent deforestation in a convection-permitting ensemble

Crook, Julia; Klein, Cornelia; Folwell, Sonja; Taylor, Christopher M.; Parker, Douglas J.; Bamba, Adama; Kouadio, Kouakou

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-4-229-2023

Articles | Volume 4, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-4-229-2023

© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-4-229-2023

© Author(s) 2023. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 4, issue 1

Research article

|

22 Mar 2023

Research article |

| 22 Mar 2023

Effects on early monsoon rainfall in West Africa due to recent deforestation in a convection-permitting ensemble

Julia Crook, Cornelia Klein, Sonja Folwell, Christopher M. Taylor, Douglas J. Parker, Adama Bamba, and Kouakou Kouadio

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/wcd-4-229-2023-supplement

Data sets

VERA: West Africa current vegetation and 1950 vegetation scenario ensemble mean data for June 2014 J. Crook https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/db259fd2bad64b6da9af884121a160a6

Short summary

We estimate recent deforestation in West Africa and use a climate model allowing explicit convection to determine impacts on early season rainfall. We find enhanced rainfall over deforestation, in line with recent observational results, due to changes in circulation rather than humidity, showing potential for future studies. Local changes depend on initial soil moisture, deforestation extent, and ocean proximity, with sea breezes shifting inland where surface friction decreased.