Observations of Diurnal Cycles Over a West African Meridional Transect: Pre-Monsoon and Full-Monsoon Seasons

We document and characterize the climatology of the diurnal cycles encountered along a West African transect during the pre-monsoon and full-monsoon periods. The meridional gradient in low-level properties is fundamental for the monsoon dynamics and here, for the first time, it is studied based on a large set of observations from the African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analysis (AMMA) campaign. A detailed analysis of surface energy budget, boundary-layer structures and cloud occurrence is carried out to investigate the diurnal cycles of the low levels. A relatively weak meridional gradient of net radiation is observed during the pre-monsoon period, and a large gradient in sensible heat flux is found over the transect with values increasing from south to north. This, as well as the boundary-layer structures, partly explains the large contrasts in the diurnal amplitude of potential temperature and specific humidity along the transect. During the monsoon period, the atmospheric regimes drastically change involving strong interactions between the surface, atmosphere and clouds. The maximum in net radiation is shifted northwards, towards the Sahel, which potentially has a significant impact on the monsoon circulation. The sensible heat flux is considerably reduced and the diurnal amplitude is strongly damped, while the daytime boundary-layer growth decreases significantly in the Sahel related to changes in the balance of boundary-layer processes. These results highlight the contrasted diurnal cycle regimes encountered over West Africa under dry, moist and wet conditions. They provide observationally-based diagnostics to investigate the ability of models to handle the representation of the diurnal cycle over land.