气候变化领域集成服务门户(CCPortal): African Low-Level Jets and Their Importance for Water Vapor Transport and Rainfall

CCPortal

DOI	10.1029/2020GL090999
	African Low-Level Jets and Their Importance for Water Vapor Transport and Rainfall
	Munday C.; Washington R.; Hart N.
发表日期	2021
ISSN	0094-8276
卷号	48 期号:1
英文摘要	Uncertainty in the future evolution of tropical rainfall is linked to circulation changes under warming. In Africa, a key barrier to interpreting rainfall changes is our limited understanding of water vapor transport across the continent. Here, we show that a series of nocturnal easterly Low-Level Jets (LLJs), which form in the valleys punctuating the East African rift system, transport the majority of water vapor to central Africa from the Indian Ocean. There is a robust connection between strengthened LLJs and drought in eastern and southern Africa at interannual timescales, mediated by an increase in low-level divergence and water vapor export. Analysis of climate model simulations at a wide range of resolutions (250–4.5 km) suggests that grid lengths <60 km are needed to simulate the salient structures of LLJs. The failure of coarse resolution models to capture LLJs is linked with biases in rainfall climatology and variability across the continent. © 2020. The Authors.
英文关键词	Climate models; Rain; Central Africa; Circulation changes; Climate model simulations; Coarse-resolution model; East African Rift; Rainfall climatologies; Tropical rainfall; Water vapor transport; Water vapor; climate modeling; climatology; drought; rainfall; water vapor; Central Africa; East African Rift; Indian Ocean
语种	英语
来源期刊	Geophysical Research Letters
文献类型	期刊论文
条目标识符	http://gcip.llas.ac.cn/handle/2XKMVOVA/169221
作者单位	School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714	Munday C.,Washington R.,Hart N.. African Low-Level Jets and Their Importance for Water Vapor Transport and Rainfall[J],2021,48(1).
APA	Munday C.,Washington R.,&Hart N..(2021).African Low-Level Jets and Their Importance for Water Vapor Transport and Rainfall.Geophysical Research Letters,48(1).
MLA	Munday C.,et al."African Low-Level Jets and Their Importance for Water Vapor Transport and Rainfall".Geophysical Research Letters 48.1(2021).