Assessing the impact of climate variability and climate change on runoff in West Africa: the case of Senegal and Nakambe River basins

West Africa and its people are very vulnerable to climate variability and changes. Increasing the knowledge of plausible trends of rainfall dry spell lengths (DSL) in the rainy season, and of runoff, enables the assessment of vulnerability and adaptive capacity of the system. These predictions are c...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Atmospheric science letters 2011-01, Vol.12 (1), p.109-115
Main Authors: Karambiri, H., García Galiano, S. G., Giraldo, J. D., Yacouba, H., Ibrahim, B., Barbier, B., Polcher, J.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Atmospheric sciences
Climate change
climate change and variability
Climate models
Climate prediction
Climate variability
Climatic analysis
Climatology
droughts
Earth Sciences
Freshwater
Future climates
General circulation models
Hydrology
impact studies
Meteorology
Precipitation
Radiative forcing
Rainfall
Rainy season
regional climate model
Regional climate models
Regional climates
River basins
Rivers
Runoff
Sciences of the Universe
Variability
Water management
Water resources
West Africa
Wet season
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Request full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:West Africa and its people are very vulnerable to climate variability and changes. Increasing the knowledge of plausible trends of rainfall dry spell lengths (DSL) in the rainy season, and of runoff, enables the assessment of vulnerability and adaptive capacity of the system. These predictions are crucial from a water management and policy perspective. The analyses based on regional climate models (RCMs) and observed datasets exhibit non‐stationary behavior and an increase of DSL. Our results highlight the difficulty of selected RCMs to reproduce present climate and their divergence in predicting future climate. Impacts on water resources depend not only on climate forcing but also on land surface conditions. Copyright © 2011 Royal Meteorological Society
ISSN:1530-261X
1530-261X
DOI:10.1002/asl.317