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Wednesday, September 6, 2017. 12:00PM. Sahel rainfall response to a uniform oceanic warming. Yi Ming, GFDL. Sponsored by Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. More information here.

Coupled climate models project future changes to rainfall in the African Sahel ranging from severe drying to severe wettening. Atmosphere-only models perturbed with uniform ocean surface warming span a similar range, motivating study of the simpler latter problem in order to constrain the more societally relevant former one. We analyze four comprehensive atmospheric models developed at the NOAA Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, which respond to uniform ocean surface warming of 2 K with Sahel wet season rainfall changes ranging from -38 to +15%. A detailed MSE budget analysis reveals the relative importance of different processes in determining the response.