African Easterly Waves and Their Interactions with Clouds and Convection

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Recognizing the important role the African easterly waves (AEWs) play in forecasts ranging from daily to seasonal, this project seeks to understand the evolution of AEWs and their interactions with convection. The first part of the research is to obtain the statistical relationships in these interactions at various phases in the life cycle of AEWs and to investigate the physical processes involved in them using the ECMWF analyses, satellite data, radiosonde data and raingauge data. The study will then be enhanced through a case-study approach following the evolution of individual AEWs and their interactions with convection. The third part, albeit at a lower priority, is to investigate the intra-seasonal to inter-annual variability of the relationships that exist between the AEWs, the African easterly jets, and tropical convection. An important goal is to understand and gain knowledge of the precursors of Atlantic tropical cyclones through the interactions of the AEWs and tropical convection. If a conceptual model can be developed for the preconditioning for tropical cyclogenesis, it would be very valuable for the prediction community. The PI is actively involved in planning the international Western African Monsoon (WAM) experiment to be held in 2004/2005. The research from this grant will contribute to the planning of the WAM field experiment.