Abstract
According to various reports, climate change is responsible for the change in rainfall amount and pattern accompanied by the various degrees of extreme events in Sahelian West Africa in recent years. Other reports also suggest that there has been a “recovery” of the rainy season (Nicholson 2005). In this study, temporal characteristics of meteorological droughts in the Volta basin, a semi-arid region in West Africa, are investigated in order to provide a guide for sustainable water resource management. For this purpose, drought intensity, areal extent and recurrence frequency is analysed using the standardised precipitation index (SPI) for a time series between 1961 and 2005 from 52 meteorology stations across the Volta basin. Using this analysis the severity of the historical droughts of 1961, 1970, 1983, 1992 and 2001 that occurred in the region are assessed and their intensity, areal extent and return periods are obtained. The drought intensity is lower than −2.0 over nearly 75% of the region, meaning that a major part of the region was under extreme drought conditions during this year. The drought of 1983/1984 has a probability of occurrence of up to 0.1 from records spanning 44 years. The areal extent of extreme drought conditions is about 90% during this drought period.
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Acknowledgments
The presented research was carried out as part of the GLOWA Volta Project. We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) as main sponsor of the GLOWA project. The GLOWA-Volta project is a research network and we express our thanks for the scientific inputs of our partners: IMK-IFU, University of Würzburg, International Water Management Institute Ghana (IWMI), Savannah Agricultural Research Institute Ghana (SARI), Water Research Institute Ghana (WRI), Institute for Statistical, Social and Economic Research (University of Ghana), Meteorological Services Department (Ghana), Water Resources Commission Ghana (WRC), Hydrological Services Department (Ghana), Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Dévelopement (France, Burkina Faso), Ghana India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT, United Nations University––Institute for Natural Resources in Africa.
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Edited by Mitsuru Osaki and Ademola Braimoh, Hokkaido University, Japan.
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Kasei, R., Diekkrüger, B. & Leemhuis, C. Drought frequency in the Volta Basin of West Africa. Sustain Sci 5, 89–97 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-009-0101-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-009-0101-5