Monday 11/14: Rhett Douris PhD Proposal Defense

Identification of the Dominant Rainfall Mechanism Over Central Equatorial Africa

Presenter: Rhett Douris
Time: Monday, 14 November 2022, 10:00 a.m.
Location: Zoom (link available by request)

Abstract: Home to one of the largest tropical rainforests on the planet, central Africa plays a key role in the global climate system. The Congo Basin alone stores almost 50 petagrams of carbon in its vegetation, and another 30 petagrams of carbon are thought to be stored within the Congo Basin peatlands. With the storage of the carbon directly related to the vitality of the region's vegetation and peatlands, the occurrence of tropical rainfall in the region is of critical importance to both equatorial Africa and to the global climate system as a whole. However, understanding the region's climate is difficult. The central research question of the project is to illustrate and distinguish the role of the ITCZ and tropical rain belt in the climate of central Africa, and whether or not the two patterns are distinct in their development and movement across equatorial Africa. The first objective will be to identify and quantify the location of the ITCZ over Africa using variables integral to the definition of the ITCZ. The second objective will be to identify and quantify the location of the tropical rain belt over Africa using variables integral to the definition of the tropical rain belt. The third and final objective will be to establish whether the ITCZ or tropical rain belt is the dominant rainfall pattern (assuming both are present), and what the climatic drivers are for that pattern.

From Nicholson, 2018 (Fig. 10): Rainfall vs latitude at 16° and 25°E along the two transects shown in Fig. 7 during the first (Mar-May) and second (Oct-Dec) equatorial rainy seasons. At the bottom of each panel is the surface elevation (m).

Reference:

Nicholson, S. E., 2018: The ITCZ and the Seasonal Cycle over Equatorial Africa. Bull. Amer. Meteorol. Soc., 99(2), 337-348, doi:10.1175/bams-d-16-0287.1.