The West African Monsoon (WAM) is a dynamical coupled system in which climate evolution is linked to ocean/land surface forcings and to changes in the atmospheric composition. The understanding and predictability of the WAM variability requires a detailed knowledge of feedbacks between the surface (land-ocean) and the atmosphere. Such variability of the WAM has raised important issues related to sustainability, land degradation, and food and water security in the region.
The African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analyses (AMMA) programme is an international, integrated multidisciplinary project dedicated to improving our knowledge and understanding of the WAM and its variability on daily to interannual and longer timescales, including climate change scenarios. The aim of AMMA is to address practical issues related to prediction of the WAM and applications in terms of societal need.
The second phase of AMMA is now on-going. This session will address new results on a multi-processes integrative view of the WAM and its feedback loops including its water and energy cycles, links with the continental and oceanic surfaces, predictability and forecast skill at different time scales, and the development and improvement of early warning systems. In particular abstracts are welcomed on extreme events, the intraseasonal time scale, evaluation of climate model biases, analyses of CMIP5 runs including decadal time scale predictability, regional modelling, results from ALMIP2, WAMME2, ESCAPE and ECLliS, and developments of climate and environmental information for society.