Published August 2019 in Modeling Earth Systems and Environment.
Authors: Kamoru A. Lawal (University of Cape Town, and Nigerian Meteorological Agency), Babatunde J. Abiodun (University of Cape Town), Dáithí A. Stone (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory), Eniola Olaniyan (Nigerian Meteorological Agency and Federal University of Technology, Akure), Michael F. Wehner (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory).
This study classified maximum air temperature patterns over West Africa into six groups and evaluated the capability of a global climate model (Community Atmospheric Model version 5.1; CAM) to simulate them. 45-year (1961–2005) multi-ensemble (50 members) simulations from CAM were analysed and the results were compared with those of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) and the twentieth Century Reanalysis data sets. The results show that whilst the CAM simulations underestimate the magnitude of inter-annual variability of boreal spring maximum air temperature averaged over West Africa, they nevertheless demonstrate the ability to reproduce the inter-annual variations of the observed maximum air temperature, with low discrepancies, over West Africa.
This paper results from SWIFT Work Packages R2 and R5.