SAHEL RAINFALL AND WORLDWIDE SEA TEMPERATURES, 1901-85

Using the comprehensively quality-controlled Meteorological Office Historical Sea Surface Temperature data set (MOHSST) we show for the first time that persistently wet and dry periods in the Sahel region of Africa are strongly related to contrasting patterns of sea-surface temperature (SST) anomalies on a near-global scale. The anomalies include relative changes in SST between the hemispheres, on timescales of years to tens of years, which are most pronounced in the Atlantic.-from Author