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convective hotspots, namely the Amazon Basin and Maritime Continent, where ascent in rainiest months begins at the surface (Nie et al., 2010). This classical picture of rainfall‐producing mechanisms conjectured by previous works over central Africa contributes to the misleading picture and disregards the contribution of features like the Saharan heat low (Lavaysse et al., 2009) and Angola low (Howard & Washington, 2018) located over northern and southern Africa, respectively. While these features are prominent in the regulation of climate over northern and southern Africa, their role in modulating the central African climate is largely unexplored. More recent studies underline the contribution of these lows to the central African climate mainly through the components of the African easterly jets (Creese & Washington, 2016; Kuete et al., 2019; Tamoffo et al., 2019), while other related features such as the shallow meridional circulation are understudied (Shekar & Boos, 2017) and merit more attention. To this effect, Longandjo and Rouault (submitted) explored the contribution of this circulation to central Africa’s rainfall. Results show that the dynamics of shallow meridional circulation are not identical during the two rainy seasons, March–April–May and September–October–November, and appear important to understand rainfall seasonality over central Africa. These thermal lows modulated African easterly jets dynamics, which are associated with secondary transverse circulations driven by ageostrophic wind (Uccellini & Johnson, 1979) and which may contribute to lower level subsidence over central Africa. This mechanism is unexplored and merits more attention to understand the reasons behind lower‐level subsidence underneath regions of deep convection. Another candidate that merits more attention to provide insights into seasonality over central Africa is the Congo Air Boundary, a largely forgotten element of regional circulation, which controls the southward migration of rainfall during the second half of the year (Howard & Washington, 2019). At interannual timescale, thermal lows over northern and southern Africa also modulate rainfall trends over central Africa (Cook & Vizy, 2019). Further investigations of these key processes are needed to promote the understanding of seasonality and trend of rainfall over central Africa. Other investigations of rainfall mechanisms led to increased interest on Walker‐like circulation (Cook & Vizy, 2015; Hua et al., 2016; Neupane, 2016; Pokam et al., 2014) and identification of a closed shallow overturning cell, named the Congo Basin Cell, that determines the rainfall maximum location over eastern central Africa (Longandjo & Rouault, 2020) and the upper level Zonal Asymmetric Pattern (Dezfuli et al., 2015). Despite this progress in the understanding of the regional dynamic, drivers of regional precipitation deserve more attention. What drives the genesis of mesoscale convective systems, which provide more than 70% of regional precipitation (Nesbitt et al., 2006), is not fully resolved.

      Although the shallow meridional circulation and African easterly jet have been intensively studied over West Africa (e.g., Hagos & Zhang, 2010; Thorncroft et al., 2011), they could contribute in a different way to regional rainfall processes over central Africa. Over West Africa the well‐known “monsoon jump” and the associated seasonal meridional migration of rainfall is modulated by the northern component of the African Easterly Jet through inertial instability, whereas over Central Africa such modulation is not observed (Cook, 2015). In addition, differences in the shape of the northern and southern hemisphere of Africa lead to differences in the driving mechanisms of each local mid‐level tropospheric jet (Kuete et al., 2019) and the associated features (Adebiyi & Zuidema, 2017). Moreover, in a geographic sense, central Africa is unique as a region of deep convection bordered north and south by semi‐arid regions. This suggests that although understanding drivers of climate variability over central Africa may benefit from advances in knowledge of features as shallow meridional circulation and African easterly jet over other regions in Africa, specific investigation of their role over central Africa is needed to avoid misleading information.

      Schematic illustration of climatology of rainfall regimes from CHIRPS at 0.250 spatial resolution during the period 1981–2010. Schematic illustration of climatology of rainfall regimes from CHIRPS at 0.250 spatial resolution during the period 1981–2010.

      The direct dynamical effect of topography remains a hot topic and needs to be investigated in detail to unravel the physical mechanism modulating convection and rainfall. The results of Laing et al. (2012) show that deep convection is collocated with maxima in the 925–600

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