Convective Squalls over the Eastern Equatorial Atlantic

Abstract The Congo Basin and the adjacent equatorial eastern Atlantic are among the most active regions of the world in terms of intense deep moist convection, leading to frequent lightning and severe squalls. Studying the dynamics and climatology of this convection is difficult due to a very sparse operational network of ground-based observations. Here, a detailed analysis of recently available high temporal resolution meteorological observations from three oil platforms off the coast of Angola spanning the three wet seasons from 2006/07 to 2008/09 is presented. The annual cycle of squall days as identified from wind data closely follows that of convective available potential energy (CAPE)…