In preparing the 5-year plan for atmospheric and oceanic research studies , the French community selected the West African Monsoon as a major research topic. During the last 20 years, many advances have been made in various fields such as hydrology, convective systems,atmospheric chemistry, statistical forecast of seasonal rain.

Nevertheless, there are still major features that are not well understood. Also, General Circulation Models poorly simulate the African monsoon climate and its variability Meteorological forecasting is still challenging in this region. The main difficulty is actually its strongly marked aspect of multi-scaled and multi-processes. A synthetic review on various aspects of African Monsoon including the standing issues will be presented. To address these issues, the French community has proposed to set-up at international level a combination of coordinated research actions in different fields.

The talk will describe the scientific objectives for a comprehensive study of West African monsoon and its different components: atmospheric dynamics, continentalwater cycle, atmospheric chemistry, and continental and oceanic surface conditions. Emphasis will be made on the monsoon dynamics and the water cycle.