A characterization of the variation in relative humidity across West Africa during the dry season

The variation of relative humidity across West Africa during the dry season is evaluated using the Modern Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA) dataset and the method of self-organizing maps. Interest in the dry season of West Africa is related to the connection between near-surface atmospheric moisture and the occurrence of meningitis across West Africa, most notably in the region known as the meningitis belt. The patterns in relative humidity are analyzed in terms of frequency of each pattern as well as the sequencing from one pattern to the next. The variations in relative humidity are characterized subannually for individual years from 1979 to 2009 as well as decadally over the entire 30-yr duration of dry seasons in West Africa. The progression from relatively moist patterns to relatively dry patterns and back to the moist patterns over the course of the dry season corresponds to the northward and then southward migration of the intertropical convergence zone. The results indicate distinctly different frequency and sequencing of relative humidity patterns from year to year. The year-to-year changes in relative humidity patterns are gradual. There is some indication of a larger, possibly decadal, pattern to the year-to-year changes in the variation of relative humidity over the course of the dry season. The results are reflective of the reanalysis data including potentially unusual and erroneously dry conditions in central Africa after the mid-1990s.