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The 1983 drought in the West Sahel: a case study

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Abstract

Some drought years over sub-Saharan west Africa (1972, 1977, 1984) have been previously related to a cross-equatorial Atlantic gradient pattern with anomalously warm sea surface temperatures (SSTs) south of 10°N and anomalously cold SSTs north of 10°N. This SST dipole-like pattern was not characteristic of 1983, the third driest summer of the twentieth century in the Sahel. This study presents evidence that the dry conditions that persisted over the west Sahel in 1983 were mainly forced by high Indian Ocean SSTs that were probably remanent from the strong 1982/1983 El Niño event. The synchronous Pacific impact of the 1982/1983 El Niño event on west African rainfall was however, quite weak. Prior studies have mainly suggested that the Indian Ocean SSTs impact the decadal-scale rainfall variability over the west Sahel. This study demonstrates that the Indian Ocean also significantly affects inter-annual rainfall variability over the west Sahel and that it was the main forcing for the drought over the west Sahel in 1983.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Serge Janicot, Nils Gunnar Kvamst  Ivar Seierstad, Ellen Marie Viste and Justin Wettstein for their useful comments. We thank the Max-Planck-Institute for Meteorology for providing and supporting the ECHAM5 model. The UK Meteorological Office and Hadley Centre is acknowledged for providing the HadISST 1.1—global SST—data-set. This work was supported by the COMPAS and NOClim project funded by the research council of Norway and by the AMMA project of the European Union.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, Allégaten 70, 5007, Bergen, Norway

    Jürgen Bader

  2. Geophysical Institute, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway

    Jürgen Bader

  3. Leibniz-Institute for Marine Sciences at the University of Kiel, Kiel, Germany

    Mojib Latif

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  1. Jürgen Bader
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  2. Mojib Latif
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Correspondence to Jürgen Bader.

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Bader, J., Latif, M. The 1983 drought in the West Sahel: a case study. Clim Dyn 36, 463–472 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-009-0700-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00382-009-0700-y

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