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The radiative heating rate due to mineral dust over West Africa is investigated using the radiative code STREAMER, as well as remote sensing and in situ observations gathered during the African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analysis Special Observing Period (AMMA SOP). We focus on two days (13 and 14 June 2006) of an intense and long lasting episode of dust being lifted in remote sources in Chad and Sudan and transported acrossWest Africa in the African easterly jet region, during which airborne operations were conducted at the regional scale, from the southern fringes of the Sahara to the Gulf of Guinea. Profiles of heating rates are computed from airborne LEANDRE 2 (Lidar Embarqué pour l'étude de l'Atmosphère: Nuages Dynamique, Rayonnement et cycle de l'Eau) and spaceborne CALIOP (Cloud Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations) lidar observations using two mineral dust model constrained by airborne in situ data and groundbased sunphotometer obtained during the campaign. Complementary spaceborne observations (from the Moderate-resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer-MODIS) and in-situ observations such as dropsondes are also used to take into account the infrared contribution of the water vapour. We investigate the variability of the heating rate on the vertical within a dust plume, as well as the contribution of both shortwave and longwave radiation to the heating rate and the radiative heating rate profiles of dust during daytime and nighttime. The sensitivity of the so-derived heating rate is also analyzed for some key variables for which the associated un certainties may be large. During daytime, the warming associated with the presence of dust was found to be between 1.5 Kday-1 and 4 Kday-1, on average, depending on altitude and latitude. Strong warming (i.e. heating rates as high as 8 Kday-1) was also observed locally in some limited part of the dust plumes. The uncertainty on the heating rate retrievals in the optically thickest part of the dust plume was estimated to be between 0.5 and 1.4 Kday-1. During nighttime much smaller values of heating/cooling are retrieved (less than ±1 Kday-1). Furthermore, cooling is observed as the result of the longwave forcing in the dust layer, while warming is observed below the dust layer, in the monsoon layer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present work analyses the effect of dust aerosols on the surface and top of atmosphere radiative budget, surface temperature, sensible heat fluxes, atmospheric heating rate and convective activity over West Africa. The study is focused on the regional impact of a major dust event over the period of 7-14 March 2006 through numerical simulations performed with the mesoscale, nonhydrostatic atmospheric model MesoNH. Due to its importance on radiative budgets, a specific attention has been paid to the representation of dust single scattering albedo (SSA) in MesoNH by using inversions of the AErosol RObotic NETwork (AERONET). The radiative impacts are estimated using two parallel simulations, one including radiative effects of dust and the other without them. The simulations of dust aerosol impacts on the radiative budget indicate remarkable instantaneous (at midday) decrease of surface shortwave (SW) radiations over land, with regional (9°-17° N, 10° W- 20° E) mean of -137 W/m2 during the 9 to 12 March period. The surface dimming resulting from the presence of dust is shown to cause important reduction of both surface temperature (up to 4°C) and sensible heat fluxes (up to 100 W/m2), which is consistent with experimental observations. At the top of the atmosphere, the SW cooling (regional mean of -12.0W/m2) induced by mineral dust is shown to dominate the total net (shortwave+longwave) effect. The maximum SW heating occurs within the dusty layer with values corn- prised between 4 and 7° K by day and LW effect results in a cooling of -0.10/-0.200 K by day. Finally, the simulations suggest the decrease of the convective available potential energy (CAPE) over the region in the presence of mineral dust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The West African heat low (WAHL), a region of high surface temperatures and low surface pressures, is a key element of the West African monsoon system. In this study, we propose a method to detect the WAHL in order to monitor its climatological seasonal displacement over West Africa during the period 1979–2001, using the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecast (ECMWF) ERA-40 reanalyses. The low-level atmospheric thickness (LLAT), a variable defined as the difference of geopotential heights at 700 and 925 hPa, is used to detect the dilatation of these levels generated by an increase of the temperature. We define grid points with 10% highest values of the LLAT as the WAHL. We show that our method reliably positions the WAHL over areas of high surface temperatures and low surface pressures, and that it is effective at detecting heat lows. In the course of the year, the climatological WAHL is shown to migrate north-westward from a position south of the Darfur mountains in the winter (November–March) to a location over the Sahara, between the Hoggar and the Atlas mountains, during the summer (June–September). The temperature tendency equation is used to investigate the processes controlling the displacement of the WAHL, and more particularly the heating at low levels. The specific period of the onset of the WAHL in its summer location over the Sahara (referred to as the Saharan heat low -SHL- onset) is also analysed during the 1984–2001 period, using complementary brightness temperature data from the European Union-funded Cloud Archive User Service (CLAUS). The climatological onset of the SHL occurs around 20 June, i.e. just before the climatological monsoon onset date. The present study suggests that the onset of the WAHL occurs approximately 5 days before the monsoon onset for the 1984–2001 period. This is confirmed independently by comparing the SHL onset date and the monsoon onset date for the 1984–2001 period. The seasonal evolution of the WAHL for the year 2006 (the year of the African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analysis project Special Observation Period) is analysed and compared with the climatological results. The operational ECMWF analyses were used for that purpose. Except in April, the spatial distribution of the WAHL remains relatively unchanged and agrees with the climatology. The onset of the SHL in 2006 occurs on 18 June, which is close to the climatological date, in spite of the delay in the onset of the rainy season in Sahel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]