Over the course of the last 10 years the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports to identify the ranges of uncertainty for the 21st century climate change in West Africa. However, large uncertainties still remain, especially, for precipitation, based on the last assessment. In this special issue, we aim to identify and disseminate recent advances in our understanding of the West African climate system. This includes studies that incorporate observations and simulations of various components of the climate system across multiple timescales including but is not limited to climate variability and the role of sea surface temperature anomalies and trends across the global ocean, long-term measurements, surface-atmosphere interactions, aerosol, atmospheric chemistry and climate connections, and global and regional modeling.

We believe that recent advances in the areas outlined above will help to bring clarity on the various factors that currently influence the West African climate system and will likely continue throughout the 21st century. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• The 21st century global/regional climate projections
• Land-atmosphere interactions and their linkages to weather and climate
• Linkages between the Saharan Air Layer (SAL)/aerosols/chemistry and climate
• Indian, Atlantic and Pacific Ocean connections to West African Climate variability
• Weather-climate connections (African easterly waves (AEWs), mesoscale convective systems (MCSs) and tropical cyclones, climate change, and variability)
• New observation or tools to help quantify climate change in West Africa

Before submission authors should carefully read over the journal's Author Guidelines, which are located at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijgp/guidelines/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/ according to the following timetable: