This study assesses the water resources and environmental challenges of Lagos mega city, Nigeria, in the context of climate change. Being a commercial hub, the Lagos population has grown rapidly causing an insurmountable water and environmental crisis. In this study, a combined field observation, sample analysis, and interviews were used to assess water challenges. Observed climate, general circulation model (GCM) projections and groundwater data were used to assess water challenges due to climate change. The study revealed that unavailability of sufficient water supply provision in Lagos has overwhelmingly compelled the population to depend on groundwater, which has eventually caused groundwater overdraft. Salt water intrusion and subsidence has occurred due to groundwater overexploitation. High concentrations of heavy metals were observed in wells around a landfill. Climate projections showed a decrease in rainfall of up to 140 mm and an increase in temperature of up to 8 °C. Groundwater storage is projected to decrease after the mid-century due to climate change. Sea level rise will continue until the end of the century. As the water and environmental challenges of Lagos are broad and the changing characteristics of the climate are expected to intensify these as projected, tackling these challenges requires a holistic approach from an integrated water resources management perspective.
In this study, a non-local MOS is proposed for the downscaling of daily rainfall of couple model intercomparison project phase 5 (CMIP5) GCMs for the projections of rainfall in Peninsular Malaysia for two representative concentration pathways (RCP) scenarios, RCP4.5 and RCP8.5. Projections of eight GCMs for both the mentioned RCPs were used for this purpose. The GCM simulations were downscaled at 19 observed stations distributed over Peninsular Malaysia. Random Forest (RF) was used for the development of non-local regression-based MOS models. The results revealed a high accuracy of the models in downscaling rainfall at all the observed stations. The mean absolute error (MAE) of the models were found in the range of 0.8–0.39; normalized root mean square error (NRMSE) between 7.4 and 41.7, Percent Bias (PBIAS) between –0.3 and 10.1, Nash–Sutcliffe coefficient (NSE) between 0.81 and 0.99 and R2 between 0.89 and 0.99. The increase in annual rainfall was in the range of 7.3–29.5%. The increase was higher for RCP8.5 compared to RCP4.5. The maximum increase was observed in the northern part of Peninsular Malaysia in the range of 20.7–29.5%, while the minimum in the south-west region was in the range of 7.6–15.2%.
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