Weather regimes over Senegal during the summer monsoon season using self-organizing maps and hierarchical ascendant classification. Part II: interannual time scale

The aim of this work is to define over the period 1979–2002 the main synoptic weather regimes relevant for understanding the daily variability of rainfall during the summer monsoon season over Senegal. “Interannual” synoptic weather regimes are defined by removing the influence of the mean 1979–2002 seasonal cycle. This is different from Part I where the seasonal evolution of each year was removed, then removing also the contribution of interannual variability. As in Part I, the self-organizing maps approach, a clustering methodology based on non-linear artificial neural network, is combined with a hierarchical ascendant classification to compute these regimes. Nine weather regimes are identified using the mean sea level pressure and 850?hPa wind field as variables. The composite circulation patterns of all these nine weather regimes are very consistent with the associated anomaly patterns of precipitable water, mid-troposphere vertical velocity and rainfall. They are also consistent with the distribution of rainfall extremes. These regimes have been then gathered into different groups. A first group of four regimes is included in an inner circuit and is characterized by a modulation of the semi-permanent trough located along the western coast of West Africa and an opposite modulation on the east. This circuit is important because it associates the two wettest and highly persistent weather regimes over Senegal with the driest and the most persistent one. One derivation of this circuit is highlighted, including the two driest regimes and the most persistent one, what can provide important dry sequences occurrence. An exit of this circuit is characterised by a filling of the Saharan heat low. An entry into the main circuit includes a southward location of the Saharan heat low followed by its deepening. The last weather regime is isolated from the other ones and it has no significant impact on Senegal. It is present in June and September, and missing in July and August, meaning that this is a weather regime more specific of the intermediate seasons than the summer. It is included in a large-scale pattern covering the northern latitudes of Europe. The correspondence between these “interannual” synoptic weather regimes and the “pure” synoptic regimes defined in Part I has been established. By selecting a high statistical significance level for these correspondences, each of five out of nine “interannual” weather regimes has a close correspondence with one “pure” synoptic weather regime, one out of them have links with two “pure” regimes, and the last three regimes have no significant correspondence in terms of “pure” regimes. However when considering more moderate links, two out of these three regimes show a connection with a “pure” regime, and the last one remains isolated. The ensemble of the weather regimes occurrences can explain a significant part of interannual variability of summer rainfall amount over Senegal, especially linked to the driest and the wettest weather regimes occurrences. It is also shown that Senegal rainfall state is very sensitive to a small displacement or deformation of the weather regime patterns.