Identification

Title

Impact of Stratospheric Aerosol Geoengineering on meteorological droughts in West Africa

Abstract

This study assesses changes in meteorological droughts in West Africa under a high greenhouse gas scenario, i.e., a representative concentration pathway 8.5 (RCP8.5), and under a scenario of stratospheric aerosol geoengineering (SAG) deployment. Using simulations from the Geoengineering Large Ensemble (GLENS) project that employed stratospheric sulfate aerosols injection to keep global mean surface temperature, as well as the interhemispheric and equator-to-pole temperature gradients at the 2020 level (present-day climate), we investigated the impact of SAG on meteorological droughts in West Africa. Analysis of the meteorological drought characteristics (number of drought events, drought duration, maximum length of drought events, severity of the greatest drought events and intensity of the greatest drought event) revealed that over the period from 2030-2049 and under GLENS simulations, these drought characteristics decrease in most regions in comparison to the RCP8.5 scenarios. On the contrary, over the period from 2070-2089 and under GLENS simulations, these drought characteristics increase in most regions compared to the results from the RCP8.5 scenarios. Under GLENS, the increase in drought characteristics is due to a decrease in precipitation. The decrease in precipitation is largely driven by weakened monsoon circulation due to the reduce of land-sea thermal contrast in the lower troposphere.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7j96b0m

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2022-01-29T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact