Frequency of Sahelian storm initiation enhanced over mesoscale soil-moisture patterns

Evapotranspiration of soil moisture can affect temperature and humidity in the lower atmosphere, and thereby the development of convective rain storms. Climate models have illustrated the importance of soil-moisture–precipitation feedbacks for weekly rainfall totals in semi-arid regions, such as the Sahel1. However, large variations exist between model feedbacks, and the mechanisms governing the strength and sign of the feedback are uncertain. Here, we use satellite observations of land surface temperatures and convective cloud cover over West Africa—collected during the wet seasons between 2006 and 2010—to determine the impact of soil moisture on rainfall in the Sahel. We show that variations in soil moisture on length scales of approximately 10–40 km exert a strong control on storm initiation—as evidenced by the appearance of convective cloud. The probability of convective initiation is doubled over strong soil-moisture gradients compared with that over uniform soil-moisture conditions. We find that 37% of all storm initiations analysed occurred over the steepest 25% of soil-moisture gradients. We conclude that heterogeneities in soil moisture on scales of tens of kilometres have a pronounced impact on rainfall in the Sahel, and suggest that similar processes may be important throughout the semi-arid tropics.