On what scale can we predict the agronomic onset of the West African Monsoon?

Accurate prediction of the commencement of local rainfall over West Africa can provide vital information for local stakeholders and regional planners. However, in comparison with analysis of the regional onset of the West African Monsoon, the spatial variability of the local monsoon onset has not been extensively explored. One of the main reasons behind the lack of local onset forecast analysis is the spatial noisiness of local rainfall. A new method that evaluates the spatial scale at which local onsets are coherent across West Africa is presented. This new method can be thought of as analogous to a regional signal against local noise analysis of onset. This method highlights regions where local onsets exhibit a quantifiable degree of spatial consistency (denoted local onset regions or LORs). It is found that local onsets exhibit a useful amount of spatial agreement, with LORs apparent across the entire studied domain; this is in contrast to previously found results. Identifying local onset regions and understanding their variability can provide important insight into the spatial limit of monsoon predictability. Whilst local onset regions can be found over West Africa, their size is much smaller than the scale found for seasonal rainfall homogeneity. A potential use of local onset regions is presented that shows the link between the annual Inter-Tropical Front progression and local agronomic onset.