Subseasonal forecasts of heat waves in West African cities

Ngoungue Langue, Cedric G.; Lavaysse, Christophe; Flamant, Cyrille

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-25-147-2025

Articles | Volume 25, issue 1

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-25-147-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

Reducing the impacts of natural hazards through forecast-based...

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-25-147-2025

© Author(s) 2025. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 25, issue 1

Research article

|

07 Jan 2025

Research article |

| 07 Jan 2025

Subseasonal forecasts of heat waves in West African cities

Cedric G. Ngoungue Langue, Christophe Lavaysse, and Cyrille Flamant

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-25-147-2025-supplement

Data sets

ERA5 hourly data on single levels from 1940 to present H. Hersbach et al. https://doi.org/10.24381/cds.adbb2d47

MERRA-2 tavg1_2d_slv_Nx: 2d,1-Hourly,Time-Averaged,Single-Level,Assimilation,Single-Level Diagnostics V5.12.4 Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO) https://doi.org/10.5067/VJAFPLI1CSIV

S2S, ECMWF, Realtime, Daily averaged ECMWF https://apps.ecmwf.int/datasets/data/s2s/levtype=sfc/type=cf/

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Short summary

The present study addresses the predictability of heat waves at subseasonal timescales in West African cities over the period 2001–2020. Two models, the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) and the UK Met Office models, were evaluated using two reanalyses: ERA5 and MERRA. The results suggest that at subseasonal timescales, the forecast models provide a better forecast than climatology, but the hit rate and false alarm rate are sub-optimal.