AMMA - Better predictions of variations in the West African monsoon and their socio-economic consequences

The West African Monsoon's watershed volume has sharply decreased from the 50s to the 90s with devastating socio-economic impacts. AMMA aims to improve the assessment of rainfall changes at seasonal, inter-annual and decadal timescales so that short, medium and long term mitigation measures of the socio-economic impacts can be devised. Rainfall forecasts are being set up thanks to multi-disciplinary analysis of the complex interactions between land-surface, ocean and the atmosphere. Therefore partners with complementary skills have been included in the consortium, not merely related to meteorology and climatology but also, for instance, to analyze impacts of the changes in the Monsoon on water resources, agriculture and health. The significant number of European and African partners has made it possible to take measurements simultaneously at different locations and at various scales. African partners involved disseminated adaptation methods for agriculture and water use will also contribute to reach the objective of training and education of local scientists to improve their capacity to follow up monitoring of the Monsoon variability after the end of the project. The 2006 seasonal observation campaigns enabled to collect a unique set of observations in the air, on the sea and on the land, which can now be used, along with previously collected data, to establish weather forecasting tools.

• 60 articles published in 2007
• 6000 sounding balloons sent off
• Success rate of the sounding balloon network in West Africa jumped from 50% to 80%
• Survey on perception of climate change effects submitted to 800 West Africans in 500 villages
• Project total cost: over 40 million euros
• EU contribution: over 13 million euros
• Funding allocated to African partners: over 3 million euros