Dakar 2005

African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analysis

First International Conference

The First International Conference of AMMA was held in Dakar between 28th of November and 2nd of December 2005, followed by the workshop on impacts the 3rd and 4th December 2005.

Group picture of the Dakar conference participants

Background

African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analysis (AMMA) is an international project to improve our knowledge and understanding of the West African monsoon (WAM) and its variability with an emphasis on daily-to-interannual timescales. AMMA is motivated by an interest in fundamental scientific issues and by the societal need for improved prediction of the WAM and its impacts on West African nations.

At this time scientists from more than 20 countries, representing more than 40 national and pan-national agencies are involved in AMMA. In addition to the international structure which has been set up, a network of African scientists linked to AMMA has been established (AMMANET) which will help to consolidate existing collaborations in Africa and to federate initiatives through a pan-African partnership.

AMMA is endorsed by the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP) and continues to develop in association with CLIVAR and GEWEX. AMMA has also been endorsed by two projects within the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP): IGAC and ILEAPS.  AMMA is working with other international projects and programmes to achieve its aims including GCOS, GOOS and THORPEX.

Conference Objectives

The conference aimed to bring together researchers from around the world working on the WAM and its impacts, to review ongoing research activities and to discuss future contributions and directions within the AMMA research programme. It also provided the first real opportunity for establishing and coordinating collaborations at the international level, and in particular with African scientists.

Substantial efforts were made to ensure good attendance at the conference, particularly from Africans in the region. In the end we significantly exceeded our expectations. We received more than 300 abstracts and in the end had 255 participants from 23 countries including at least 70 Africans from the region. This enthusiasm for AMMA is a strong endorsement for what AMMA is working to achieve.

The conference took place within the enhanced observing period (EOP) and just ahead of the AMMA special observing period (SOP) in 2006. The conference provided an ideal opportunity to review and discuss the plans for the observing campaign as well as the opportunities for related research activities.

Recognising the societal need to develop strategies that reduce the socioeconomic impacts of the variability of the WAM, AMMA facilitates the multidisciplinary research required to provide improved predictions of the WAM and its impacts. This is achieved and coordinated through 5 international working groups: (i) West African monsoon and global climate, (ii) Water cycle, (iii) Land-surface atmosphere feedbacks, (iv) Prediction of climate impacts and (v) High impact weather prediction and predictability. These 5 research areas also constitute the main themes of the conference and are briefly described under Conference Themes.

Programme with Presentations (for download)

G1: West African Monsoon and Global Climate

(i) WG1 discussion
Participation in the sessions that relate to WG1 was very strong with 94 contributions from Africa, Europe and the US. Key topics discussed in the parallel session included: Synoptic and Mesoscale weather systems, Climate Change uncertainties and Regional Climate Modeling.

Key Activities that were agreed in the short term included:
o Work with modeling community to agree international modeling strategy (see below).
o Promote special session at AMS January 2007 on West African Monsoon
o Establish international e-mail list for WG1, make contributions to AMMA International Newsletter, and develop international webpages for WG1.
o A proposal for the core-group was made that included expertise from modeling, aerosol, chemistry and ocean subject areas as well as links to the two impacts WGs (WG4 and WG5). It will also include appropriate representation from national and pan-national projects to aid the coordination and avoid duplication of efforts (true for all WGs).

(ii) Aerosol-Chemistry
Key topics discussed in the parallel session included: Dust aerosols, Anthropogenic aerosols biomass burning and aerosols mixing and Field observations.

Key Activities that were agreed in the short term included:
o Develop modeling strategy (based on multi-scales)
o Establish linkages with AMMA Satellite database
o Run special session at IGAC conference in September, 2006 (Cape Town)
o Funding of African scientists: continue discussions with IGAC & interact with ILEAPS & ST4 regarding the various training opportunities.
o Use and Develop international webpages; make contributions to AMMA International Newsletter

(iii) Ocean
Key topics discussed in the parallel session included: Field observations, SSTs and the West African Monsoon (large-scale), Air sea fluxes, Ocean circulation in the Eastern Tropical Atlantic, Air-sea coupling, African programs and databases and satellite data.
The Dakar conference was the 1st opportunity to gather African oceanographers working in the region. A meeting took place for the 1st time ever between African oceanographers from Nigeria, Benin, Togo, Ivory Coast and Senegal.

Key Activities that were agreed in the short term included:
o Produce a document that summarises the following: African programs and their potential link with AMMA; their data needs, national datasets (description and availability); similar information from France. The ultimate goal of this is to produce a regional ocean dataset.
o Produce a scientific document that describes the linkages between the climate studies in AMMA and the coastal and impact studies of interest in the region (e.g. coastal erosion, fisheries).
o Work towards establishing a free-access web-based database to provide ocean and air-sea interaction products.
o Communicate through an established e-mail list.

(iv) Evaluation and improvement of GCMs
This parallel session was established in recognition of the substantial interest that exists in the international community to contribute to this activity. In addition to the existing activities in Europe, other groups wish to contribute and collaborate (e.g. proposal from Y. Xue and B. Lau under the auspices of CEOP). There was general agreement to coordinate these activities under two main headings:

o Activity 1: Evaluation of Models (MIP)
o Activity 2: Improvement of Processes and Feedbacks

There is a recommendation that these activities should be linked to the relevant interested international bodies: COPES, CLIVAR (including VACS), GEWEX (including CEOP and GMPP), THORPEX and IGBP.
An international coordinating group was proposed to develop and continue these discussions

WG2: The Water Cycle
Understanding the water cycle and its change due to natural and anthropogenic factors is critically important: Availability of water is one of the most limiting parameters for life, agriculture and economic development in the Sahel (WG4); water has a central role in monsoon dynamics and variability (WG1) and it has an important role in high impact weather forecasts (WG5). A major focus of this WG is to consider the water cycle at a range of scales, from regional to local.

Key activities that were agreed in the short term included:
o At regional scale, to improve knowledge of constraints used in water budget, specially precipitation (PRECIPAMMA group is dedicated to this issue) and surface flux observations and to produce a paper on state of (un)knowledge of water budget.
o To decrease uncertainties in how processes are represented in global/regional models through mesoscale studies.
o At the mesoscale, the main activity in the coming year will be to carry out a case study analysis on the 28 Aug - 1 Sep 05 case in the "dry forecast run"; using observations and models and interacting with the AMMA satellite database.
o At the local scale, accurate hydrological budgets are currently carried out on the AMMA super-sites. Following up to this will be an evaluation of parametrisations and mesoscale models for supporting the water budget assessments.
o An e-mail list will be established and the WG2 webpage will be developed.

WG4: Prediction of Climate Impacts
The plenary session in the main conference included 16 talks covering a wide range of subjects relevant to this WG. In place of a parallel discussion session in the main conference, this WG organized a 2-day workshop on the Saturday and Sunday that followed. The aim of this workshop was to start discussions aimed at "bridging the gap" between climate researchers and users. This was attended by 60 people. The first plenary session included talks on river basin management, Senegal malaria control and Senegalese Food security. This was followed by talks on space time uncertainty. There were then breakout working groups covering agriculture, water and health topics. We will shortly receive reports from these groups which will include recommendations on the best way to advance impacts within AMMA.

WG5: High Impact Weather Prediction and Predictability
This WG is concerned with improving our knowledge and understanding of high impact weather over the West African continent, downstream tropical Atlantic and the extratropics. Those attending the conference were mainly concerned with the West African region and most of the discussion reflected this. In the plenary session many talks were provided by West African forecasters on current forecasting techniques. The parallel discussion session was organized along 4 themes important for WG5 (i) Tailoring and evaluation of forecast products for users in tropical regions; (ii) Impact of additional observations and especially radiosoundings over West Africa in analysis/forecasting systems for (a) West Africa, (b) Atlantic and USA and (c) Europe; (iii) Targeted observations in tropical regions and (iv) Societal impacts.

Strong contributions to the WG5 activity are being made by the AMMA forecasting group; in particular through the dry run that is concerned with evaluating forecasting methods and products for 2 weeks in 2005 (22nd August - 2nd September). Also, we have received enthusiasm from several NWP centers to interact with and contribute to the operational activities in WG5 (e.g. ECMWF, Meteo-France, NCEP, NRL, UK Met Office).

Key Activities that were agreed in the short term included:
o Continue to evaluate the forecasts during the dry run period and to provide documentation on the various activities related to this on the WG5 webpages.
o To continue discussions with WG4 on the utility of the ensemble prediction system (EPS) in the West African region and to consider establishing training courses to support their use.
o Establish and coordinate what the various NWP centers will contribute to regarding observing system experiments in AMMA (including the dry run).
o Establish and coordinate the contributions to work on targeting observations.
o An e-mail list will be established to help with communication between interested parties. Also, an WG5 newsletter will be produced and the WG5 webpages developed. A contribution will be made for the AMMA-International Newsletter.
o A workshop in 2007 is under consideration.

The International Organisation team of the conference would like to thank especially the following institutions who enabled the conference by funding participants and / or logistical help during the conference:

AMMA EU Award

The French institutions (CNRS/INSU, CNES, IRD, Météo-France, IFREMER) participating into the funding of AMMA France allowed the participation of a large number of African colleagues in addition to the funding received from IGAC, DoE (ARM), EU (AMMA-EU Contract Number 004089-2), SCAC of the French Embassies Niamey, Senegal, Benin, Mali, Burkina Dasso...) , UNESCO/CO

Download of Conference flyer in English or in French

Further Information for preparation (in English)

Informations complémentaires pour la préparation (en français)