0000000001231674
AUTHOR
N. Martiny
Compared regimes of NDVI and Rainfall in semi-arid regions of Africa
International audience; Bi-monthly normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) at an 8km spatial resolution from the advanced very high resolution radiometers (AVHRR) was used from 1981 to 1995 to analyse the vegetation response to rainfall supply in semi-arid regions of Africa. Within the 200-600 mm annual rainfall belt, for which the apparent NDVI response to rainfall was the strongest, three regions were selected which exhibited different patterns in their NDVI regimes and/or relationships with rainfall. The regions, located in western, southern and eastern Africa, were split into coherent sub-regions in terms of mean regime of photosynthetic activity through a cluster analysis. Overal…
Forecasting the vegetation photosynthetic activity over the Sahel: a Model Output Statistics approach
The predictability of the mean August–September photosynthetic activity of vegetation over the Sahel for the period 1982–2002 is explored through a Model Output Statistics approach using ECHAM4.5 retrospective forecasts. Given the poor ability of Atmospheric General Circulation Models (AGCMs) to correctly simulate rainfall over the Sahel, the stress is put on using atmospheric dynamics alone. The mean July–September predicted fields of zonal wind at 600 hPa, and humidity flux at 850 hPa, are selected because of their key role in the West African Monsoon system and their consistency in AGCMs. Coupled modes of NDVI/atmospheric dynamics are extracted using Canonical Correlation Analyses perfor…