Modeling of precipitation over Africa: progress, challenges, and prospects

Akinsanola, A. A., Wenhaji, C. N., Barimalala, R., Monerie, P.-A. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5304-9559, Dixon, R. D., Tamoffo, A. T., Adeniyi, M. O., Ongoma, V., Diallo, I., Gudoshava, M., Wainwright, C. M., James, R., Silverio, K. C., Faye, A., Nangombe, S. S., Pokam, M. W., Vondou, D. A., Hart, N. C. G., Pinto, I., Kilavi, M., Hagos, S., Rajagopal, E. N., Kolli, R. K. and Joseph, S. (2025) Modeling of precipitation over Africa: progress, challenges, and prospects. Advances in Atmospheric Sciences. ISSN 0256-1530 doi: 10.1007/s00376-024-4187-6

Abstract/Summary

In recent years, there has been an increasing need for climate information across diverse sectors of society. This demand has arisen from the necessity to adapt to and mitigate the impacts of climate variability and change. Likewise, this period has seen a significant increase in our understanding of the physical processes and mechanisms that drive precipitation and its variability across different regions of Africa. By leveraging a large volume of climate model outputs, numerous studies have investigated the model representation of African precipitation as well as the underlying physical process. These studies have assessed whether the physical processes are well depicted and whether the models are fit for informing mitigation and adaptation strategies. This paper provides a review of the progress in precipitation simulation over Africa in state-of-the-science climate models and discusses the major issues and challenges that remain.