The potential of increasing man-made air pollution to reduce rainfall over southern West Africa

Pante, Gregor; Knippertz, Peter; Fink, Andreas H.; Kniffka, Anke

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-35-2021

Articles | Volume 21, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-35-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

Results of the project "Dynamics–aerosol–chemistry–cloud...

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-35-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 21, issue 1

Research article

|

04 Jan 2021

Research article |

| 04 Jan 2021

The potential of increasing man-made air pollution to reduce rainfall over southern West Africa

Gregor Pante, Peter Knippertz, Andreas H. Fink, and Anke Kniffka

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-35-2021-supplement

Data sets

The climate hazards infrared precipitation with stations - a new environmental record for monitoring extremes C. Funk, P. Peterson, M. Landsfeld, D. Pedreros, J. Verdin, S. Shukla, G. Husak, J. Rowland, L. Harrison, A. Hoell, and J. Michaelsen https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2015.66

MIDAS: Global Weather Observation Data Met Office http://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/0ec59f09b3158829a059fe70b17de951

Dataset Edition A. H. Fink and M. Marlon https://doi.org/10.6096/baobab-dacciwa.1785

Surface Radiation Data Set - Heliosat (SARAH) - Edition 2 U. Pfeifroth, S. Kothe, R. Müller, J. Trentmann, R. Hollmann, P. Fuchs and M. Werscheck https://doi.org/10.5676/EUM_SAF_CM/SARAH/V002

MYD08_M3 - MODIS/Aqua Aerosol Cloud Water Vapor Ozone Monthly L3 Global 1Deg CMG S. Platnick, M. King, and P. Hubanks https://doi.org/10.5067/MODIS/MYD08_M3.061

MOD08_M3 - MODIS/Terra Aerosol Cloud Water Vapor Ozone Monthly L3 Global 1Deg CMG S. Platnick, M. King, and P. Hubanks https://doi.org/10.5067/MODIS/MOD08_M3.061

Monthly Climate Timeseries: Niño 3.4 SST Index NOAA https://psl.noaa.gov/gcos_wgsp/Timeseries/Data/nino34.long.data

Monthly Climate Timeseries: Atlantic Meridional Mode (AMM) SST Index NOAA https://psl.noaa.gov/data/timeseries/monthly/AMM/ammsst.data

Climate Timeseries AMO (Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation) Index NOAA http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/timeseries/AMO/

Hadley Centre Sea Ice and Sea Surface Temperature data set (HadISST) Met Office https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadisst/

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Short summary

Seasonal rainfall amounts along the densely populated West African Guinea coast have been decreasing during the past 35 years, with recently accelerating trends. We find strong indications that this is in part related to increasing human air pollution in the region. Given the fast increase in emissions, the political implications of this work are significant. Reducing air pollution locally and regionally would mitigate an imminent health crisis and socio-economic damage from reduced rainfall.