Mesoscale convective systems (MCSs) over North Africa provide critical rainfall while posing flooding risks and often serving as precursors to Atlantic tropical cyclones. This study investigates how MCSs in the Africa-Atlantic region respond to a future climate warming scenario using 3-km convection-permitting simulations with the Model for Prediction Across Scales-Atmosphere. We simulate September 2006 convective activity under both present and future climate conditions using a pseudo-global warming approach. Results from our objective MCS tracking algorithm show that despite increased convective available potential energy (CAPE), MCS numbers decrease in future climate scenarios due to substantial increases in convective inhibition (CIN). While changes in future MCS intensity measured by brightness temperature are not as evident, future organized MCSs show rainfall increases. This increase in future organized MCS rainfall is larger over water than over Africa due to relative humidity and water vapor both being larger over water than over land. Geographically, future MCSs shift southward, while they move eastward over Africa and westward over the Atlantic. The most extreme future MCSs of the Africa-Atlantic region contain higher water vapor throughout the atmospheric column, stronger updrafts and downdrafts, enhanced vertical motion extending deeper into the atmosphere, and increased diabatic heating rates.
Ocasio et al. (Mon,) studied this question.