Revisiting the Seasonal Cycle of Rainfall over Central Africa

Abstract

Abstract The Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), with its twice-annual passage over central Africa, is considered as the main driver of the rainfall seasonality. But recently, this paradigm was challenged. Here, a simple comprehensive paradigm is presented with an asymmetric shallow meridional overturning circulation – driven by surface conditions – playing a thermodynamical control on the rainfall seasonality over central Africa. Indeed, due to the local evaporative cooling effect, the foot of the ascending branch of Hadley cells occurs where the temperature is the warmest, indicating a thermal low. This distorts the southern Hadley cell by developing its bottom-heavy structure. As result, both shallow and deep Hadley cells coexist over central Africa year–round. The deep mode is associated with the poleward transport of atmospheric energy at upper levels. The shallow mode is characterized by a shallow meridional overturning cell that favours the building-up of the mid-tropospheric moisture convergence, with no contribution of the African easterly jets, indicative of deep convection. The precipitating convection embedded in this rising branch of Hadley cells at midlevels, and with it the rainfall maximum, are thus controlled by this mid-tropospheric moisture convergence. Its meridional migration highlights the interhemispheric rainfall contrast over central Africa and outlines the unimodal seasonality. On the other hand, forced by the Congo basin cell, the precipitable water regulates the deep convection from the vegetated surface of Congo basin, acting as a continental sea. This nonlinear mechanism separates the rainfall into three distinct regimes: the moisture-convergence-controlled regime, with convective rainfall exclusively occurring in rainy season; the local evaporation-controlled regime with drizzle and the precipitable-water-controlled regime, with exponential rainfall increase occurring both in dry season.