Impact of Climate Change on West African Monsoon Features and their Relationship with Convection and Precipitation

Abstract

The West African Monsoon (WAM) system plays a significant role in socio-economic activities especially for the population living in the tropical northern Africa whose economy depends mainly on rain-fed agriculture. In West Africa, any intra-seasonal rainfall variability impacts severely on the local agricultural, water resources and equally produces severe consequences on human health. This region experiences the full impact of the African Easterly Jet (AEJ) and African Easterly Waves (AEW) systems and yet is ill-equipped to mitigate the space, time, and intensity variability in rainfall that these systems bring. This study describes some issues of the WAM features variability and provides specific contributions which can be taken into account in order to stabilize the effect of climate change in the region.