Climate Change Impacts on the Ou é m é River, Benin, West Africa
Received Date: Sep 04, 2013 / Accepted Date: Sep 22, 2013 / Published Date: Sep 30, 2013
Abstract
The present study identifies the future impacts of climate change on the flows of the Ouémé River in Bonou, for the 2035-2064 and 2070-2099 periods. For this identification, a set of 65 climate projections from 24 climate models, based on three greenhouse gas emissions scenarios (A2, B1 and A1B) was used. Hydrologic simulations were carried out with a lumped conceptual hydrology model. The results obtained from this study show that daily temperatures in the Ouémé catchment over the reference period (1971-2000) will raise by up to 5°C during the 2070-2099 horizon. For their part, mean daily precipitation projections are much more uncertain. However, what is clear is that mean monthly flows will see a drop potentially as high as 30% during the rainy season, and 20% during the dry season. Similarly, mean seasonal and annual flows will drop by as much as 8 to 10% and 3 to 5%, respectively. This drop will also affect maximum annual flows at a proportion of approximately 3% in the 2035-2064 period and of 5% between 2070 and 2099. This study also showed that we will be seeing changes in extreme flows. These changes will be characterized by a slight drop in quantiles for return periods of less than 10 years, and a potential increase of up to 100 m3/s (an increase of approximately 6%) for quantiles of the return period of 100 years covering the 2070-2099 horizon. These changes have impacts on the economic activities and on the water resource availability in the catchment.
Keywords: Climate change; Hydrology model; Impacts; Flows; Water availability
Citation: Essou GRC, Brissette F (2013) Climate Change Impacts on the Ouémé River, Benin, West Africa. J Earth Sci Clim Change 4: 161. Doi: 10.4172/2157-7617.1000161
Copyright: ©2013 Essou GRC, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
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