Seminário do Departamento de Ciências Atmosféricas
Tema: Does Southern Africa Exhibit a Monsoon System?
Apresentação: Kenedy Cipriano Silverio (IAG-USP)
Resumo:
Whether southern Africa (SAF), defined here as African landmass south of 5°S, constitutes a distinct regional monsoon system remains debated, partly because its climatological low-level circulation lacks the canonical seasonal wind reversal found in many monsoon regions. Here, we evaluate SAF within the contemporary global monsoon framework, which emphasizes the coupled evolution of continental heating, moisture transport, convection, and atmospheric circulation. Using observations and reanalysis data for 1981–2025, we show that SAF exhibits a pronounced austral-summer rainfall regime, with a coherent sequence of continental warming, lower-tropospheric moistening, deep convection, and widespread precipitation. During the mature phase, moisture transport from the Atlantic and Indian Ocean sectors, together with the Angola Low and Botswana High, supports an organized monsoon circulation characterized by low-level convergence and upper-level divergence. Removing the annual-mean circulation further reveals a distinct seasonal monsoon component. With these results, we complete our talk demonstrating that SAF shares the fundamental thermodynamic and dynamical characteristics of recognized regional monsoons, supporting its identification as a distinct component of the global monsoon system.
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