The effects of anthropogenic and volcanic aerosols and greenhouse gases on twentieth century Sahel precipitation.

ABSTRACT: There is little scientific consensus on the importance of external climate forcings-including anthropogenic aerosols, volcanic aerosols, and greenhouse gases (GHG)-relative to each other and to internal variability in dictating past and future Sahel rainfall. We address this query by relating a 3-tiered multi-model mean (MMM) over the Climate Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 "twentieth century" and pre-Industrial control simulations to observations. The comparison of single-forcing and historical simulations highlights the importance of anthropogenic and volcanic aerosols over GHG in generating forced Sahel rainfall variability in models. However, the forced MMM only accounts for a small fraction of observed variance. A residual consistency test shows that simulated internal variabili

SUBMITTER: Herman RJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7376254 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature