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Predicting water resources in West Africa for 2050
Karambiri H. (1) , Garcia S. (2) , Adamou H. (3) , Decroix L. (4) , Mariko A. (5) , Sambou S. (6) and Vissin E. (7)
(1) 2iE, Burkina Faso; (2) UPC, Spain; (3) UAM, Niger; (4) IRD, France; (5) UB, Mali; (6) UCAD, Senegal; (7) UAC, Benin
Water resources play a key role in the socio-economic
development, human activities, environmental and
ecosystems preservation. In West Africa, these vital
resources are very vulnerable to global changes and human
pressures. The current and future availability and dynamic of
water resources need to be better assessed and analyzed to
ensure a sustainable and integrated management and
planning. In the AMMA-EU project, the WP3.3 aims to
assess the impacts of climate and land use change on the
water resources in West Africa for a number of river basins
on different scales, different agro-climatic areas and
different uses (Senegal, Volta and Oueme). The assessment
of water resources for future horizons (2050) is done
through hydrological modelling coupled or forced with
climate models outputs. Up today, global climate predictions
using GCMs were intensively and widely used. Even if these
coarse simulations allow bringing broad tendencies on water
resources availability and distribution, they do not bring
relevant answers on the availability and variability of water
resources locally. The recent advances in climate sciences
and their capacity to provide fine scaled results using
regional/sub-regional models (RCM) or downscaling
techniques should be discussed with the climate community,
in order to provide detailed assessments of climate change
impacts on water resources corresponding to the needs of
stakeholders, decision-makers and communities in West
Africa.
Key words: Climate change, Impacts assessment, water
resources, West Africa, AMMA.