The vertical profiles of temperature and water vapour from the Atmospheric InfraRed Sounder (AIRS) have been validated across various regions of the globe as an effort to provide a substitute for radiosonde observations. But there is a paucity of inter-comparisons over West Africa where local convective processes dominate and RAOBs are limited. This study validates AIRS temperature and relative humidity profiles for selected radiosonde stations in West Africa. Radiosonde data was obtained from the AMMA and DACCIWA campaigns which spanned 2006 - 2008 and June-July 2016 respectively and offered a period of prolonged radiosonde observations in West Africa. AIRS performance was evaluated with the bias and root mean square difference (RMSD) at seven RAOB stations which were grouped into coastal and inland. Evaluation was performed on diurnal and seasonal timescales, cloud screening conditions and derived thunderstorm instability indices. At all timescales, the temperature RMSD was higher than the AIRS accuracy mission goal of ±1 K. Relative humidity RMSD was satisfactory for the entire troposphere with deviations < 20% and < 50% respectively. AIRS retrieval of water vapour under cloudy and cloud-free conditions had no significant difference whereas cloud-free temperature was found to be more accurate. The seasonal evolution of some thunderstorm convective indices were also found to be comparable for AIRS and RAOB. The ability of AIRS to capture the evolution of these indices imply its applicability for determining the thunderstorm probability over West Africa under the Global Challenges Research Fund African Science for Weather Information and Forecasting Techniques project.

Agro-climatic zones are geographical areas delineated based on climate homogeneity and impact on agriculture. Ghana's agro-climatic zones have been in use since the 1960s, with no consideration given to current climate change and variability. The continued use of this age-old classified zones suggest Ghana's climate remains stable despite previous research findings to the contrary. In this study, we reconstructed a more appropriate and dis-aggregated agro-climatic zone map of Ghana that is in tandem with the current climate change and variability. Our findings revealed significant changes in the number of climate zones, their boundary sizes and geographical orientation. The newly proposed agro-climatic zones map consist of five distinctive climate regimes namely Sudan Savannah, Guinea Savannah, Transition, Forest and Coastal zones. The Sudan and Guinea Savannah zones showed a southerly expansion. The transition zone shriveled in size as the Guinea Savannah zone took over most of it, notably in the southeast. The forest zone also shrank in size with a northwest shift while the coastal belt grew to encompass the whole coast of Ghana. These changes are strong evidence of climate change and possible food production changes. The findings of this study are useful to agriculture sector in planning their activities, the health sector in predicting specific diseases caused by changes in weather and climate, Ghana Meteorological Agency for weather forecasting purposes, and the National Disaster Management in identifying disaster prone zones.