AGS-PRF: Role of Land-atmosphere Processes in Climate Models' Projections of the West African Monsoon

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The goal of this project is to advance understanding of the physical processes responsible for uncertainties in the projected evolution of the West Africa Monsoon (WAM) in climate models. Making use of simulations from the recent fifth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5), this project proposes to explore the hypothesis that differences in the simulation of land-atmosphere processes in climate models play a role in the spread of WAM projections across models. Expected outcomes of this activity include: (i) an evaluation of WAM evolution in climate change simulations from the latest generation of climate models; (ii) a characterization of simulated land-atmosphere processes in these models; and (iii) an estimation of how inter-model variability with respect to these processes relates to the spread in WAM projections. Regardless of whether simulated land-atmosphere processes are found to explain the scatter in WAM projections in climate models, this project will lead to increased understanding of how models simulate fundamental coupled land-atmosphere processes as well as the uncertainty of such processes across the CMIP5 ensemble.