GC11D-0585:
Potential Impacts of Projected Mid-twenty-first Century Climate Change on the Hydrology of the Nasia Catchment, West Africa

Monday, 15 December 2014
Clement A Alo1, Felix Mensah Oteng1, Menberu Meles Bitew2, Kazi F Ahmed3 and Guiling Wang4, (1)Montclair State University, Montclair, NJ, United States, (2)University of Georgia, Athens, GA, United States, (3)University of Connecticut, Groton, CT, United States, (4)University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, United States
Abstract:
In this study, the coupled surface water-groundwater model, MIKE-SHE has been calibrated to observed streamflow and groundwater heads spanning 2000-2009 for the Nasia sub-catchment in the White Volta Basin, West Africa. The calibrated model has been used to project the mid-twenty-first century hydrology of the region. Bias-correction has also been applied to daily precipitation and monthly average temperature projections for the period 2010-2050 to derive the meteorological forcing data required to drive the model. The climate projections have been drawn from ten Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5) relatively high resolution (less than two degrees latitude/longitude) climate models under the representative concentration pathway, RCP8.5. Here, we present simulated mid-twenty-first century hydrologic (streamflow and groundwater) changes over the Nasia sub-catchment with MIKE-SHE forced with the bias-corrected CMIP5 climate projections.