Analysis of a Sahelian annual rainfall index from 1896 to 2000; the drought continues

L'Hôte, Yann; Mahé, Gil; Somé, Bonaventure; Triboulet, Jean

doi:10.1080/02626660209492960

Cited by 235 publications

(136 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…Lamb and Peppler, 1992;Nicholson et al, 2000;L'Hôte et al, 2002). For example, Lamb's index (Tarhule and Lamb, 2003;also see Figure 3(b)) has used the same 20 Sahelian stations since it was first developed in the mid-1970s; exactly half of those stations are west/east of the 6°W boundary used by Chappell and Agnew (2004), and only 13 station-years out of 1220 during 1941-2001 had missing data.…”

Section: Flaws In Chappell and Agnew (2004)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, one can easily verify whether the decreasing trend in the number of stations is a cause of the trend in the Sahel regional rainfall time series by, for example, looking at trends at fixed stations (e.g. Nicholson et al, 2000;L'Hôte et al 2002), or analysing a subset of fixed stations with nearly continuous rainfall data, as we do here.…”

Section: Effects Of Changing Station Networkmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Hulme, 1992;Lamb and Peppler, 1992;Nicholson et al, 2000;L'Hôte et al, 2002), vegetation cover (Tucker et al, 1991), dust transport (Prospero and Lamb, 2003), and other agricultural and societal data (e.g. Nicholson et al 1998;Tarhule and Lamb 2003; and numerous reports in news media).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

The recent Sahel drought is real

Dai

Lamb

Trenberth

et al. 2004

Intl Journal of Climatology

340

207

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Using station rainfall data extracted from two comprehensive data sets, we show that large decreasing rainfall trends were widespread in the Sahel (10-20°N and 18°W-20°E) from the late 1950s to the late 1980s. Thereafter, Sahel rainfall has recovered somewhat through 2003, although the drought conditions have not ended in the region. These results confirm the findings of many previous studies. We also found that large multi-year oscillations appear to be more frequent and extreme after the late 1980s than previously. Analyses of Sahel regional rainfall time series derived from a fixed subset of stations and from all available stations show that the decreasing trend in Sahel rainfall is not an artifact of changing station networks. The rainfall model used by Chappell and Agnew (2004 International Journal of Climatology 24: 547-554) is incorrect and their modelled rainfall time series is totally unrepresentative of Sahel average rainfall. Their conclusion about the Sahel rainfall trends being an artifact of changing station locations is emphatically wrong and their speculative statements about the implications of their results for other studies and other regions of the world are completely unfounded.

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Section: Flaws In Chappell and Agnew (2004)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Effects Of Changing Station Networkmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The recent Sahel drought is real

Dai

Lamb

Trenberth

et al. 2004

Intl Journal of Climatology

340

207

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…This has led to contradictory results from climate trend studies at local and subregional scales. For instance, following the 1990s' report of the Sahelian drought (Sivakumar 1992;Le Barbé and Lebel 1997), several studies considered it either ended in the 1990s (Ozer et al 2003), continued (Hulme 2001;L'Hote et al 2002;Dai et al 2004) or even was simply an artifact of changing station networks (Chappell and Agnew 2008). The recent discovery of a precipitation gradient from eastern to western Sahel ) in addition to the north-south Inter Tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) influence on rainfall distribution is also a factor of importance for reliable hydrological predictions in West Africa.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Hydro-climatic changes in the Niger basin and consistency of local perceptions

et al. 2014

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Since the 1970s, the Niger basin has been characterized by hydro-climatic changes which have significant impacts on local populations. These changes are not well documented as a result of a decreasing observation network for hydro-climatic data. Indigenous peoples' knowledge has increasingly been considered an important component in addressing these data gaps. We evaluated the consistency of indigenous perceptions and adaptive responses with rainfall and river discharge observations in the Niger basin. Socioeconomic data were collected from 239 households in 30 communities across two settlements in the Niger basin. Data on historical rainfall and river discharge from 1950 to 2010 were analyzed and the consistency with local perceptions was assessed. Generally, there was a high agreement between observations and perceptions, but impacts of climate change in the communities were dependent on social and environmental factors that can introduce differences in perception despite identical observations. Indigenous perceptions gave good indication of the most vulnerable sectors as well as communities who also displayed the greatest willingness to combat climate change. These results suggest that integration of indigenous perceptions into climate change science, especially in data scarce regions, is highly valuable.

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“…Maps depicting the rainfall patterns and trends for the periods 1940/1970 and 1971/1995 are drawn, as several works have given 1970 as the beginning of the rainfall deficit in West Africa on average (Mahe et al, 2001;L'Hote et al, 2002;Paturel et al, 2003b), as shown in the rainfall dataset plot in Figure 4, with the rupture in 1970 according to the different detection tests available in the Khronostat software (Lubes-Niel et al, 1998). The rainfall and runoff changes in 1970 are very well marked over the Bani River (Mahe et al, 2000), and on a larger scale for other rivers of West Africa (Mahe and Olivry, 1999) using the same software.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Study of water stress and droughts with indicators using daily data on the Bani river (Niger basin, Mali)

Roudier

Mahé

2009

Intl Journal of Climatology

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ABSTRACT:As in most parts of Africa, the Bani basin (Niger River, Mali) is threatened by climate changes. This study focuses on drought hazards and its indicators as derived from the climatic moisture index using the monthly data for the period in order to examine the Bani basin's vulnerability to water stress. In this study, water deficit (drought) was logically addressed using the standardized precipitation index on a 10-day time step. The inadequacies in the standardized precipitation index while estimating water deficit within the basin based on technical issues result in the usage of the effective drought index (EDI). This robust index is specially designed for daily data computation and uses daily data efficiently while estimating water deficit. Three regions were identified to be threatened by droughts (length, number, and evolution in time) within the basin, using EDI as a tool of investigation. It also shows that droughts seem to be less frequent but of a longer duration due to the increasing trend of total dry days over the study period.

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Analysis of a Sahelian annual rainfall index from 1896 to 2000; the drought continues

Cited by 235 publications

References 13 publications

The recent Sahel drought is real

The recent Sahel drought is real

Hydro-climatic changes in the Niger basin and consistency of local perceptions

Study of water stress and droughts with indicators using daily data on the Bani river (Niger basin, Mali)

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