Luis T. Perez Prado
Rainfall Variability over West Africa: The Role of Vegetation Cover
Due to the increase in population during this century, West Africa has experienced a significant change in land cover. This change ranges from deforestation at the southern coast to desertification in the northern border with the Sahara. The interaction between biospheric and atmospheric processes in this region has been the subject of intense research in the last three decades (Charney 1975; Charney et al, 1977; Cunnington and Rowntree, 1986; Walker and Rowntree, 1997; Xue and Shukla, 1993; Zheng and Eltahir, 1997). I use the regional climate modeling system (RegCM2) to investigate the role of vegetation distribution variability over West Africa. Four experiments were completed to assess the impact of land cover change over the region by assuming different distribution of vegetation: Reconstructed Vegetation, Desertification, Deforestation, and Desertification-Deforestation. Climatic Variables such as rainfall distribution, moist static energy, wind circulation, net radiation, temperature and mixing ration will be compared. The objective of this effort is to advance our understanding of the role that vegetation changes have played in the West Africa drought since the early 1960's
