Changes in rainfall regime over Burkina Faso under the climate change conditions simulated by 5 regional climate models

Ibrahim, Boubacar; Karambiri, Harouna; Polcher, Jan; Yacouba, Hamma; Ribstein, Pierre

doi:10.1007/s00382-013-1837-2

Cited by 90 publications

(93 citation statements)

References 58 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…The decreases and increases of future rainfall amounts are not statistically significant at the 95% confidence level (Table 3). These results are consistent with those of [6], who predicted rates of change of −10% to 10% for future rainfall in West Africa and those of [10], who stated that precipitation projections are uncertain in the West. Figure 4 shows the future change rates of monthly rainfall amounts for different projected periods under the RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios of climate change.…”

Section: Change In Rainfallsupporting

confidence: 92%

Assessment of Future Water Resources Availability under Climate Change Scenarios in the Mékrou Basin, Benin

2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract:This work aims to evaluate future water availability in the Mékrou catchment under climate change scenarios. To reach this goal, data from Regional Climate Models (RCMs) were used as the input for four rainfall-runoff models which are ModHyPMA (Hydrological Model based on Least Action Principe), HBV (Hydrologiska Byråns Vattenbalansavdelning), AWBM (Australian Water Balance Model), and SimHyd (Simplified Hydrolog). Then the mean values of the hydro-meteorological data of three different projected periods (2011-2040, 2041-2070 and 2071-2100) were compared to their values in the baseline period. The results of calibration and validation of these models show that the meteorological data from RCMs give performances that are as good as performances obtained with the observed meteorological data in the baseline period. The comparison of the mean values of the hydro-meteorological data of the baseline period to their values for the different projected periods indicates that for PET there is a significantly increase until 2100 for both Representative Concentration Pathway 4.5 (RCP4.5) and RCP8.5 scenarios. Therefore, the rate's increase of potential evapotranspiration (PET) under the RCP8.5 scenario is higher than that obtained under the RCP8.5 scenario. Changes in rainfall amounts depend on the scenario of climate change and the projected periods. For the RCP4.5 scenario, there is a little increase in the annual rainfall amounts over the period from 2011 to 2040, while there is a decrease in the rainfall amounts over the other two projected periods. According to the RCP8.5 scenario, the contrary of changes observed with the RCP4.5 scenario are observed. At a monthly scale, the rainfall amounts will increase for August and September and decrease for July and October. These changes in rainfall amounts greatly affect yearly and monthly discharge at the catchment outlet. Over the three projected periods and for both RCP4.5 and RCP8.5, the mean annual discharge will significantly increase related to the baseline periods. However, the magnitude of increases will depend on the projected period and the RCP scenario. At a monthly scale, it was found that runoff increases significantly from August to November for all projected periods and the climate change scenario.

show abstract

Section: Change In Rainfallsupporting

confidence: 92%

Assessment of Future Water Resources Availability under Climate Change Scenarios in the Mékrou Basin, Benin

2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The decrease in the number of rain days translated by a lengthening of dry spells [18] entails long periods of soil drying out. The soil drying entails an increase of the evaporation rate.…”

Section: Discussion and Summarymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The daily simulated data at the spatial resolution of 50 km × 50 km are available for free download at the ENSEMBLE data portail [25]. More details on the RCMs could be found in Ibrahim et al [14,18]. The last data used are constituted with the daily discharges measured at Wayen gauge since 1955.…”

Section: Description Of the Watershed And Data Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…An analysis of changes in annual rainfall amount over Burkina Faso from five RCMs over the 1971-2050 period [18] shows that they come mainly from the changes in two characteristics of the rainy season: the number of rain days (frequency of rain events) and the intensity of rain events. Three RCMs Henceforth, an assessment of the impacts of climate change on hydrological components from climate simulations have to be done through an assessment of the impact of changes in the two main characteristics of the rainfall field (the frequency of rain events and their intensity).…”

Section: Changes In Rainfall Field Over the 2021-2050 Period From Thementioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, the changes in annual rainfall amount (the main characteristic of the rainy season) over the West African Sahel for the horizon of the 2050s in comparison to the 1961-2000 period depend on the climate models [15][16][17][18]. The diversified trends in the rainfall regime under the climate change condition would certainly have different impacts on the hydrological processes over the different basins [16,19,20].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Hydrological Impacts of the Changes in Simulated Rainfall Fields on Nakanbe Basin in Burkina Faso

Ibrahim

Karambiri

Polcher‬

2015

Climate

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Changes in rainfall regime during the last five decades over the West African Sahel have significantly modified the hydrological regime of many rivers with a significant impact on water resources. In this study, the main hydrological processes on the Nakanbe watershed in Burkina Faso are described with two hydrological models: GR2M (lumped and monthly model) and ORCHIDEE (ORganising Carbon and Hydrology In Dynamic EcosystEms) (distributed and half hourly model). Both models were calibrated on the watershed from observed runoff data at Wayen outlet (area of 22,000 km 2 ) for the 1978-1999 period. The mean annual hydrological balance components on the watershed over this period are composed of about 4% of runoff, 10% of groundwater recharge and 86% of actual evapotranspiration for both models. An assessment of the hydrological impacts of the changes in rainfall regime simulated by five regional climate models shows some discrepancies. The hydrological simulations show that the hydrological impacts on the water balance of the watershed come mainly from the changes in rainfall field with regard to the frequency and the intensity of rain events. Compared to the decrease in frequency, it appears OPEN ACCESS Climate 2015, 3 443 that the decrease in the intensity of rain events is much more prejudicial to runoff and groundwater recharge.

show abstract

Evaluation of the COSMO‐CLM high‐resolution climate simulations over West Africa

et al. 2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The evaluation of a high‐resolution simulation at 0.11° (12 km) with the COnsortium for Small‐scale MOdelling in CLimate Mode (CCLM) regional climate model, applied over West Africa, is presented. This simulation is nested in a CCLM run at resolution of 0.44°, driven with boundary forcing data from the ERA‐Interim reanalysis, and covers the period from 1981 to 2010. The simulated temperature and precipitation are evaluated using three selected climate indices for temperature and eight indices for precipitation in five different regions against a new, daily precipitation climatology covering West Africa and against other state of the art climatologies. The obtained results indicate that CCLM is able to reproduce the observed major climate characteristics including the West African Monsoon within the range of comparable regional climate modeling evaluations studies, but substantial uncertainties remain, especially in the Sahel zone. The seasonal mean temperature bias for the rainy season from June to September ranges from −0.8°C to −1.1°C. The CCLM simulations also underestimate the observed precipitation with biases in precipitation reaching −10% in the high‐resolution and −20% in the low‐resolution model runs. CCLM extends the monsoon precipitation belt too far north, which results in an overestimation of precipitation in the Sahel zone of up to 60%. In the coastal zone, the precipitation is underestimated by up to −90%. These biases in precipitation amounts are associated with errors in the precipitation seasonality. The added value of the higher resolution of the nested run is reflected in a smaller bias in extreme precipitation statistics with respect to the reference data.

show abstract

Changes in rainfall regime over Burkina Faso under the climate change conditions simulated by 5 regional climate models

Cited by 90 publications

References 58 publications

Assessment of Future Water Resources Availability under Climate Change Scenarios in the Mékrou Basin, Benin

Assessment of Future Water Resources Availability under Climate Change Scenarios in the Mékrou Basin, Benin

Hydrological Impacts of the Changes in Simulated Rainfall Fields on Nakanbe Basin in Burkina Faso

Evaluation of the COSMO‐CLM high‐resolution climate simulations over West Africa

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About