Continuing an international collaboration that began with the ARM Mobile Facility deployment to Niamey, Niger, in 2006, meteorologist Hama Hamidou from the University of Niamey recently arrived at the Cooperative Institute for Mesoscale Meteorological Studies at the University of Oklahoma for a six-month scientific exchange. Under the guidance of Dr. Zewdu Segele, a postdoc on the site scientist team for the ARM Southern Great Plains (SGP) site, Hamidou will continue to analyze AMF data collected in Niamey. Currently, he is focusing on data collected by the W-band ARM cloud radar, microwave radiometer, and micropulse lidar. Such instruments had not been deployed previously in the Soudano-Sahel zone of Africa, so their data are expected to yield considerable insight into the behavior of that unique part of the atmosphere.

The entire atmospheric column above Niamey contains dust from the world’s greatest source of atmospheric dust—the Sahara Desert—between November and March. Then, during the April–October monsoon months, this dusty column is undercut in the lowest 3000 meters by the wedge of moist monsoon air that pushes northward from the tropical Atlantic. This juxtaposition of dust and water vapor is far more pronounced here than anywhere else in the world and can teach scientists volumes about the dual roles of dust aerosols and water vapor in the global climate system.

Segele, originally from Ethiopia, began the collaboration with Hamidou last summer, when they spent three months working together at the University of Niamey in Niger. This model of a more senior scientist guiding a younger colleague is relatively unique in the atmospheric sciences discipline for Africa. It is hoped that this arrangement will encourage similar mentoring relationships among the nascent climate science community on that continent. This exchange with the University of Niamey is funded through the ARM site scientist team for the SGP site.