Biomass-burning Aerosol, Clouds, COnvection and Precipitation in central equatorial Africa – BACCOPA

The BACCOPA project aims to study the impact of biomass burning aerosols (BBA) emitted in tropical Africa on the hydrological cycle of this region, and in particular their contribution to the recently extension of the dry season lenght. More specifically, it aims to quantify the impact of BBA plumes on the radiation budget, cloud properties, deep convection and precipitation over this region, from the event to the seasonal scale. To answer these questions, the BACCOPA project aims to set up a large-scale experimental campaign to characterise BBA properties and convective clouds in tropical Africa. This will be done using for the first time airborne (ATR of the SAFIRE unit) and surface (PEGASUS platform) observations over this region. In a complementary way, this project aims to use new and original satellite observations to characterise those properties at the regional scale in tropical Africa. This unique dataset will be used to study the impact of BBA on convective cloud properties but also as observational constraints for numerical simulations performed at very high resolutions (kilometer scale) using the climate version of the AROME model. This innovative modelling tool will make it possible to simulate the various interactions and to study, in particular, the contribution of the effect of BBA as condensation nuclei to that of the interactions with solar radiation. Although focused on tropical Africa, the BACCOPA project aims to make a significant contribution to improving our understanding of the interactions between aerosols, clouds, radiation and climate, which represents one of the most important uncertainties in quantifying the impact of anthropogenic emissions on current and future climate.