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

Abstract

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.