Long-Range Forecasting of the Nile River Flows Using Climatic Forcing

Abstract

Forecasting the Nile River flows is of vital interest for many African nations such as Sudan and Egypt. Any improvement in the forecast accuracy and/or the prediction horizon will have a significant influence on improving the water management in these nations. The idea of this research stems from previous studies that have identified that certain large scale climatic oscillations, such as the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), as being important factors in long-range hydro-climatic forecasting. The mechanism by which the Pacific ENSO is transmitted to the Nile basin hydrology is not fully understood, although its effects on the flow have been identified. In addition, other large-scale oceanic-atmospheric systems, such as those related to the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans, may exert a significant influence on the climate of the Nile basin. Thus, other predictors need to be identified to find signals that may contribute to explaining the variability of the Nile River flows. The aim of this study is to further identify Oceanic regions and hydro-climatic variables of strong connection with the Nile Basin hydrology, particularly Nile River streamflows. The study will also focus on extending the prediction horizon beyond the previously used time scales.

Large‐scale controls on Ganges and Brahmaputra river discharge on intraseasonal and seasonal time‐scales

“…Berri et al (2002) studied the Parana-La Plata complex and noted that during the El Niños of 1983, 1992 and 1998 excessive flooding occurred requiring the evacuation of hundreds of thousands of people. Wang and Eltahir (1999), Tawfik (2003) and Eldaw et al (2003) have corroborated the Nile discharge-SOI association. Labat et al (2004Labat et al ( , 2005 using wavelet techniques showed that the Amazon, Parana, Orinoco and Congo river flows were influenced by the SOI on a 3-6-year time-scale in keeping with the earlier study of Amarasekera et al (1997), while longer term variability was influenced by a combination of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and the North Atlantic Oscillation.…”

Droughts and floods over the upper catchment of the Blue Nile and their connections to the timing of El Niño and La Niña events

“…Vizy and Cook (2001) found that both warming and cooling of the Gulf of Guinea in summer suppress convection over northeast Africa. Eldaw et al (2003) found that the Blue Nile River JASO flow is significantly and positively correlated with the previous year's ASON Guinea precipitation, and the Guinea precipitation is another potential predictor of the Blue Nile River flows, with 11 months of lead time and r = 0.63 for the period 1953-1989. The following example illustrates the added value of knowing the timing of El Niño and La Niña for predicting extreme floods.…”

“…They found significant improvement in model skill by incorporating, beside the Pacific and Atlantic SST, the Indian SST. Eldaw et al (2003) showed that the Indian Ocean's SSTs and the Blue Nile River flows are generally negatively correlated, but sometimes, certain regions of the Indian Ocean (e.g., the Arabian Sea and the sea north of Australia) are positively correlated. Seleshi (1991) found that one of the causes of Ethiopian rainfall is the strong movement of moist air from the high southwest Gulf of Guinea to the low northeast center of Arabia.…”

Hydroclimate variability and long-lead forecasting of rainfall over Thailand by large-scale atmospheric variables

“…Several models, such as artificial neural networks (ANNs) (Silverman and Dracup 2000), multiple regression model (Schöngart and Junk 2007) and principal component analysis (Eldaw et al 2003), have been developed, and show better performance using the predictors of large-scale atmospheric information (Singhrattna et al 2005a, Zehe et al 2006. The basic variables, e.g.…”