Congo Basin rainfall climatology: can we believe the climate models?

by Richard Washington, Rachel James, Helen Pearce, Wilfried M. Pokam, and Wilfran Moufouma-Okia

Philosophical Transactions BVolume 368(1625):20120296

September 5, 2013

©2013 by The Royal Society

Number of rain gauges per year over the region 5° S–5° N, 12.5–30° E in the CRU 0.5° rainfall dataset.

Richard Washington et al. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 2013;368:20120296

©2013 by The Royal Society

Long-term mean annual cycle of rainfall (mm d−1) for Equatorial Central Africa over the region 5° S–5° N, 12.5–30° E for the following datasets: CMAP, TRMM, TAMSAT, CMORPH, NCEP, CSFR,

ERA-40, ERA-Interim, ensemble mean of CMIP3 and CMIP5.

Richard Washington et al. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 2013;368:20120296

©2013 by The Royal Society

Rainfall climatologies (mm d−1) during MAM for the following datasets: (a) CMAP, (b) TAMSAT, (c) NCEP, (d) ERA-40, (e) ensemble mean of CMIP3, (f) TRMM, (g) CMORPH, (h) CFSR, (i) ERA-

Interim, (j) ensemble mean of CMIP5.

Richard Washington et al. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 2013;368:20120296

©2013 by The Royal Society

Rainfall climatologies for (a) MAM and (b) SON for the 10 datasets used in figure 2.

Richard Washington et al. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 2013;368:20120296

©2013 by The Royal Society

(a) Rainfall (mm d−1) and (b) moisture flux at 850 hPa climatologies for (i) the driest (CNRM-CM5) and (ii) wettest (NorESM1-M) models in SON. Units are mm d−1 in (a) and g kg−1 m s−1 in (b) with

contours of divergence (g kg−1 s−1).

Richard Washington et al. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 2013;368:20120296

©2013 by The Royal Society