Towards a Better Understanding of Biomas Burning and Large Scale Climate Dynamics on the West African Monsoon
Abstract
Seasonal biomass burning and resulting black carbon (BC) emissions have been well documented to effect regional weather patterns, especially including low level convection. These effects can be due to the hydrophilic and radiative qualities of the aerosols emitted from such burning. This project focuses on utilizing observation and reanalysis data in order to understand the effects of BC advected from the Southern hemisphere impact the dynamics of the West African Monsoon. Our results show that, of all monsoon months, BC advection has a direct impact on precipitation in July. Early analysis indicates that biomass burning occuring near Angola/Congo advects over the Gulf of Guinea, towards the Intertropical Convergence Zone at around 850mb and stabalizes the atmosphere. For a broader impact, this region is home to more than 200 million people and thus understanding these climate patterns may carry great importance.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2017
- Bibcode:
- 2017AGUFM.A33E2409A
- Keywords:
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- 0305 Aerosols and particles;
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE;
- 3305 Climate change and variability;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES;
- 3354 Precipitation;
- ATMOSPHERIC PROCESSES;
- 1620 Climate dynamics;
- GLOBAL CHANGE