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Dominant role of greenhouse-gas forcing in the recovery of Sahel rainfall
Sahelian summer rainfall, controlled by the West African
monsoon, exhibited large-amplitude multidecadal variability
during the twentieth century. Particularly important was the
severe drought of the 1970s and 1980s, which had widespread
impacts1–6. Research into the causes of this drought has
identified anthropogenic aerosol forcing3,4,7 and changes in
sea surface temperatures (SSTs; refs 1,2,6,8–11) as the most
important drivers. Since the 1980s, there has been some
recovery of Sahel rainfall amounts2–6,11–14, although not to
the pre-drought levels of the 1940s and 1950s. Here we
report on experiments with the atmospheric component of a
state-of-the-art global climate model to identify the causes
of this recovery. Our results suggest that the direct influence
of higher levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere
was the main cause, with an additional role for changes
in anthropogenic aerosol precursor emissions. We find that
recent changes in SSTs, although substantial, did not have a
significant impact on the recovery. The simulated response
to anthropogenic greenhouse-gas and aerosol forcing is
consistent with a multivariate fingerprint of the observed
recovery, raising confidence in our findings. Although robust
predictions are not yet possible, our results suggest that the
recent recovery in Sahel rainfall amounts is most likely to be
sustained or amplified in the near term