４２０：アフリカ大陸のモンスーン解明研究

今週末には最終報告書を提出予定だが、局長らも海外出張中。木曜か金曜あたりに提出することになりそうだ。

そんな折、下記のニュースが入ってきた。科学と開発をテーマにする団体からのものである。アフリカのモンスーンの解明に7年費やし、さらに10年延ばすという。壮大な研究のようだ。

気候変動というと解析の結果しか得ることが出ないし、実際どのように対応していいか分からない。こうした気候そのものの研究というのも面白い。奥が深い。

西アフリカには行った経験がないので何とも言えないが、大陸全体に渡る壮大なモンスーンの実態と影響という研究は意味がある。水政策や戦略ばかりやっていると、時どき解析的なアプローチに係りたいという気持ちが芽生える。

コンサルは若い時解析にしか携われないが、徐々に計画に進む。その逆はあまりハイエラーキーとして想定しにくいのが普通だが、年を重ねても解析的なモデリング技術をキープしておきたいものである。

More time to unravel the African monsoon
Carol Campbell

11 September 2009

Researchers are working to improve the accuracy of monsoon prediction

A seven-year research programme delving into the mechanisms of the African monsoon will be extended for another ten years, it was announced yesterday.

The African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analyses (AMMA), which began in 2002, was supposed to finish this year.

AMMA scientists from Africa, Europe and the United States unveiled their research on the African monsoon, a period of intense rainfall that provides much of West Africa's rain, in Paris yesterday (10 September).

The monsoon arrives in summer after temperature changes shift moisture-laden winds from the Atlantic Ocean over the land. It depends on a complex relationship between the temperature, pressure and moisture of the oceans, land and atmosphere.

The researchers have found that the onset of the monsoon — an important moment that determines when farmers sow crops — appears to follow the formation of a 'tongue' of cold water in the Gulf of Guinea.

This phenomenon could increase the accuracy of monsoon prediction and improve scientists' understanding of the role of the Atlantic Ocean in its formation.

AMMA will continue to analyse activity in the Gulf of Guinea, with more work planned on weather and climate forecasts and early warning systems, Jean-Luc Redelsperger, chair of AMMA's International Scientific Steering Committee, told SciDev.Net.

Researchers have also discovered that, despite diminished rains in the western Sahel, more water is available in the region in specific situations. Drainage basins and ponds used by pastoralists have benefited from more run-off because less vegetation grows during droughts.

"Meteorological conditions in the Mediterranean and northern Indian Ocean and the variability and the retreat of the monsoon are now also better understood," Redelsperger adds.

The challenge facing scientists now, he says, is to "transform and deepen" the new knowledge and to improve seasonal and intra-seasonal forecasting.

AMMA hope that the studies will be used by West African nations in planning for food security, water, housing, health and overall economic growth.

"What we need now is to ensure that the AMMA knowledge and scientific information reach the public from policymakers to students and researchers," says Redelsperger.

The research was originally presented at AMMA's third annual conference in Burkina Faso earlier this year (20–24 July). More than 500 scientists attended the conference, contributing 440 abstracts, says Redelsperger. Forty per cent of attendees were African.