Sessions

S1: Climate change mechanisms in Africa

keynote speaker: Peter DeMenocal, Columbia university, NY, USA

In order to fully assess climate change in Africa, high spatial resolution modern climate data analyses need to be combined with long-term historical reconstructions or simulations of the natural climate variability. This session aims to share the latest advances on our understanding of the drivers of climate change in Africa at seasonal to millennial timescales. We welcome communications documenting past and current climate change, exploring the influence of external forcing, ocean circulation, aerosols, vegetation-climate feedbacks mechanisms and processes of internal variability, based on observations or model experiments.

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S2: Climate impacts on eco- and agro-systems

keynote speaker: Daithi Stone, Berkeley, USA

Past climate fluctuations have driven major changes in ecosystems through the extinction of species, long term persistence in restricted areas and major shifts in ecosystem ranges. The African ecosystems encompass highly diverse flora an fauna. This session aims to discuss the impacts of the past climate changes on African ecosystems from the tropical rainforests to the arid steppes as well as on agrosystems and food production which represent an overarching issue in Africa. Agriculture plays a significant role in climate change through a range of feedbacks involving water management, erosion, albedo, dust production and evapo-transpiration. This session welcomes contributions on vegetation modeling, reconstructions of vegetation dynamics as well as species resilience to climate and interactions between agrosystems and climate change.

S3: Tropical teleconnections and Monsoon systems

keynote speaker: Pascale Braconnot, LSCE, Paris, France
Monsoon related hydrological changes in water balance are the main impacts of climate change in Africa.The African monsoon is part of a global monsoon system that interacts with the tropical ocean and the inter-tropical convergence zone (ITCZ). However, these processes are not fully understood and this leads to major uncertainties in climate change predictions. This session aims to present and discuss observational and simulated data documenting the variability of these systems on seasonal to millennial timescales, to identify the role of insolation, the links between the ITCZ, the African, South American and Asian monsoons and the atmospheric teleconnections with the oceanic variability modes in the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans.

S4: The Mediterranean region

keynote speaker: Neil Roberts, University of Plymouth, Plymouth, UK

Northern Africa is a hotspot of biodiversity with many species persisting through several long term climatic cycles to become endemic species today. The Mediterranean area has not always been under a "Mediterranean climate", with dry and hot summers, and cool and wet winters, throughout the past thousands of years. This session aims at analyzing the past climate changes in the northernmost part of Africa, the driving mechanisms that impact ecosystems, their evolution and dynamics, and the potential relationships with human populations.

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S5: Land-Ocean links

keynote speaker: Enno Schefuß, Marum, Bremen, Germany
The spatial and temporal interactions between the African climate and the surrounding oceans over different time scales will be the main focus of this session. Integrating terrestrial and marine datasets from different areas in and around Africa would improve our understanding of the sensitivity of African environments to ocean circulation variability. The proposed session welcomes contributions from the analysis of simulated, instrumental and proxy-derived datasets.

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Closing keynote speaker: Lydie Dupont, Marum, Bremen, Germany

"Biome changes in Africa with emphasis on savannah and fire"