Potentially predictable components of African summer rainfall in an SST-forced GCM simulation

An ensemble of general circulation model (GCM) integrations forced by observed sea surface temperature (SST) represents the climate response to SST forcing as well as internal variability or "noise." Signal-to-noise analysis is used to identify the most reproducible GCM patterns of African summer precipitation related to the SST forcing. Two of these potentially predictable components are associated with the precipitation of the Guinea Coast and Sahel regions and correlate well with observations. The GCM predictable component associated with rainfall in the Sahel region reproduces observed temporal variability on both interannual and decadal time scales, though with reduced amplitude.