Impacts of Changing Environmental Conditions on Weather Systems over Africa

Africa and the surrounding Atlantic region are home to some of the most consequential weather systems on Earth. The West African Monsoon and the African Easterly Jet drive large-scale environmental conditions that generate tropical storms, flooding rains, and other high-impact weather events affecting millions of people across Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States. As the world warms, understanding how these systems will change is critical for protecting vulnerable communities and improving the tools that forecasters and policymakers rely on. This project directly addresses that need by producing more realistic projections of future weather patterns over Africa and the Atlantic, with findings to be shared openly with researchers, agencies, and communities most at risk through conference talks and scientific publications. The work also supports the training of the next generation of atmospheric scientists, including students and postdoctoral researchers, contributing to workforce development in the geosciences. This project investigates how warming will alter the African Easterly Jet (AEJ), the West African Monsoon (WAM), African Easterly Waves (AEWs), and mesoscale convective systems (MCSs) — the interconnected weather systems that seed tropical cyclones and drive high-impact precipitation events across Africa and the Atlantic basin. The research employs a novel convection-permitting regional configuration of the Model for Prediction Across Scales-Atmosphere (MPAS-A), applying the PGW method for the first time in long-term regional convection-permitting simulations. Multi-year control and PGW simulations will be conducted to assess future changes in the AEJ and WAM mean state, AEW activity, and tropical MCS behavior under simulated warmer conditions, including changes in interannual variability. Model outputs will be made publicly available through the NSF NCAR GDEX archive, supporting the broader international research community and advancing open science. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria. NSF Award ID: 2508342 | Program: 01002627DB NSF RESEARCH & RELATED ACTIVIT | Principal Investigator: Kelly Núñez Ocasio | Institution: Texas A&M University, COLLEGE STATION, TX | Award Amount: $518,229 View on NSF Award Search: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/show-award/?AWD_ID=2508342 View on Research.gov: https://www.research.gov/awardapi-service/v1/awards/2508342.html