Jan Bliefernicht

Universität Augsburg | UNA · Institute of Geography

Increasing frequencies of droughts require proactive preparedness, particularly in semi-arid regions. As forecasting of such hydrometeorological extremes several months ahead allows for necessary climate proofing, we assess the potential economic value of the seasonal forecasting system SEAS5 for decision making in water management. For seven droug...

Reliable long‐term observations from precipitation stations are often required for climatological studies but are strongly limited in many regions of the world. To improve this limitation for West Africa, we compiled daily and monthly observations from more than 20 national, continental and global databases, to establish a historical precipitation...

Classification of atmospheric circulation patterns (CP) is a common tool for downscaling rainfall, but it is rarely used for West Africa. In this study, a two‐step classification procedure is proposed for this region, which is applied from 1989 to 2010 for the Sudan‐Sahel zone (Central Burkina Faso) with a focus on heavy rainfall. The approach is b...

Understanding temporal variability in groundwater levels is essential for water resources management. In sub-Saharan Africa, groundwater level dynamics are poorly constrained due to limited long-term observations. Here, we present the first published analysis of temporal variability in groundwater levels at the national scale in sub-Saharan Africa,...

West Africa is currently experiencing extensive agricultural intensification associated with rapid population growth. Those anthropogenic land use and land-cover changes (LULCC) can have significant impacts at regional and seasonal scales but also for extreme weather events, posing high vulnerability to human, natural, and economic systems. However...

The West African savannas region is currently undergoing extensive agricultural intensification due to rapid population growth. Those anthropogenic land cover changes (LCC) can have significant impacts at regional and seasonal scales but also on extreme weather events to which human, natural and economical systems are highly vulnerable. However, th...

Accurate global horizontal irradiance (GHI) forecasting is critical for integrating solar energy into the power grid and operating solar power plants. The Weather Research and Forecasting model with its solar radiation extension (WRF-Solar) has been used to forecast solar irradiance in different regions around the world. However, the application of...

The Sudan-Sahel region has long been vulnerable to environmental change. However, the intensification of global warming has led to unprecedented challenges that require a detailed understanding of climate change for this region. This study analyzes the impacts of climate change for Burkina Faso using ten climate indices that are highly relevant to...

The Sudan-Sahel region has long been vulnerable to environmental change. However, the intensification of global warming has led to unprecedented challenges that require a detailed understanding of climate change for this region. This study analyzes the impacts of climate change for Burkina Faso using eleven climate indices that are highly relevant...

Hourly Global Horizontal Irradiance over West Africa: A Case Study of One-Year Satellite- and Reanalysis-derived Estimates vs. in Situ Measurements

The number of solar power plants has increased in West Africa in recent years. Reliable reanalysis data and short-term forecasting of solar irradiance from numerical weather prediction models could provide an economic advantage for the planning and operation of solar power plants, especially in data-poor regions such as West Africa. This study pres...

Renewable energy development is growing fast and is expected to expand in the next decades in West Africa as a contribution to addressing the power demand and climate change mitigation. However, the future impacts of climate change on solar PV and the wind energy potential in the region are still unclear. This study investigates the expected future...

Global horizontal irradiance (GHI) is the primary driver for photovoltaic (PV) technology. For PV system design and monitoring, hourly and sub-hourly GHI from reanalysis and satellite-based data are frequently used, especially in data-poor regions like Sub-Saharan Africa. However, the use of these datasets is uncertain and need to be assessed in de...

Climate model simulations typically exhibit a bias, which can be corrected using statistical approaches. In this study, a geostatistical approach for bias correction of daily precipitation at ungauged locations is presented. The method utilizes a double quantile mapping with dry day correction for future periods. The transfer function of the bias c...

Estimates of global horizontal irradiance (GHI) from reanalysis and satellite-based data are the most important information for the design and monitoring of PV systems in Africa, but their quality is unknown due to the lack of in situ measurements. In this study, we evaluate the performance of hourly GHI from state-of-the-art reanalysis and satelli...

Exploring the Potential of the Cost-Efficient TAHMO Observation Data for Hydro-Meteorological Applications in Sub-Saharan Africa. Abstract: The Trans-African Hydro-Meteorological Observatory (TAHMO) is a promising initiative aiming to install 20,000 stations in sub-Saharan Africa counteracting the decreasing trend of available measuring stations. T...

Background: Climate change and consequent increases in rainfall variability may have negative consequences for the food production of subsistence farmers in West Africa with adverse impacts on nutrition and health. We explored the pathway from rainfall through diet up to child undernutrition for rural Burkina Faso. Methods: The study used data of a...

Many open questions and unresolved issues surround the topic of bias correction (BC) in climate change impact studies (CCIS). One question relates to the contribution of downscaling of climate change scenarios on the uncertainties in results obtained using impact models for agriculture. In particular, for large area or regional agricultural impact...

Many open questions and unresolved issues surround the topic of bias correction (BC) in climate change impact studies (CCIS). One question relates to the contribution of downscaling of climate change scenarios on the uncertainties in results obtained using impact models for agriculture. In particular, for large area or regional agricultural impact...

There is an increasing demand for sound climate information in Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) for both regional and local scales. While climate information from Global Climate Models (GCMs) are usually too coarse for climate impact modelers or decision makers from various disciplines (e.g. hydrology and water management, agriculture, energy), Earth Syste...

It is the knowledge of the coming months that can be crucial for the management and control of water reservoirs for hydropower generation or for irrigation. This is particularly important in semi-arid regions of Africa that are characterized by distinctive dry seasons, i.e. where rainfall is limited to few months only. In addition, observation data...

Seasonal forecasts for monsoonal rainfall characteristics like the onset of the rainy season (ORS) are crucial in semi-arid regions to better support decision-making in water resources management, rain-fed agriculture and other socioeconomic sectors. However, forecasts for these variables are rarely produced by weather services in a quantitative wa...

Seasonal forecasts for monsoonal rainfall characteristics like the onset of the rainy seasons (ORS) are crucial for national weather services in semi-arid regions to better support decision-making in rain-fed agriculture. In this study an approach for seasonal forecasting of the ORS is proposed using precipitation information from a global seasonal...

Surface observations provide ground evidence of climate change to support the scientific guidance paving the way to better adaptation and mitigation actions. The West African Science Service Centre on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use (WASCAL) has designed a multi-stakeholder initiative to rescue the deteriorated near-surface weather, climate and...

In den letzten Jahren werden vermehrt ensemble-basierte Niederschlagsvorhersagen von numerischen Wettervorhersagemodellen als Antrieb für die operationelle Hochwasserwarnung in Deutschland eingesetzt. Allerdings sind Studien zur Qualität ensemble-basierter Niederschlagsvorhersagen für Indikatoren der Hochwasserfrühwarnung wie den Gebietsniederschla...

Es handel sich hierbei um ein Vorwort der HyWa-Ausgabe.

Core Ideas A new hydrometeorological observatory was established for the Sudan Savanna. More than 30 hydrometeorological variables in subhourly resolution are provided. Water, energy, and CO 2 fluxes are monitored along a land use change gradient. The data form the basis for an improved impact assessment of environmental changes. It is an excellent...

Seasonal climate forecasts for an early warning of climate anomalies are produced by regional climate outlook forums (RCOF) worldwide. This study presents a verification of one of the earliest RCOF products, the precipitation outlook for the West African monsoon peak period (July–September). The basis of this outlook is countrywide precipitation fo...

A novel stochastic downscaling approach to simulate ensembles of daily precipitation fields using the Gaussian Copula is presented. In contrast to many other statistical downscaling techniques, this approach uses spatial correlation (correlograms) to derive the transfer function between predictors and predictands for a parsimonious model structure....

The data described in this article are sets of daily rainfall values derived from observed station records. The data was recorded by 72 in-situ rain gauges spread over the West African Sahel. The daily rainfall time series from synoptic, climate, agro-meteorological, and rainfall stations are assessed for quality and consistency before extreme valu...

In this study, we analyze a set of agroclimatological indices across West Africa and assess their projected changes for the future. We apply the regional climate model CCLM (COnsortium for Small-scale MOdelling in CLimate Mode) with a high spatial resolution of 0.11° (approximately 12 km) under current (1981–2010) and future climate conditions, bas...

In the future the Sudanian savanna – one of West Africa's high-potential “bread baskets” – will likely face shorter rainy seasons with more extreme rains and droughts. That could have serious impacts on the vegetation and its carbon dioxide (CO2) exchange with potentially increasing CO2 emissions accelerating climate warming. Understanding how the...

Climate change and constant population growth pose severe challenges to 21st century rural Africa. Within the framework of the West African Science Service Center on Climate Change and Adapted Land Use (WASCAL), an ensemble of high-resolution regional climate change scenarios for the greater West African region is provided to support the developmen...

Two extreme, high-impact events of heavy rainfall and severe floods in West African urban areas (Ouagadougou on 01 September 2009, Dakar on 26 August 2012) are investigated with respect to their atmospheric causes and statistical return periods. In terms of the synoptic-convective dynamics, the Ouagadougou case is truly extraordinary. A succession...

West Africa is a hot spot region for land–atmosphere coupling where atmospheric conditions and convective rainfall can strongly depend on surface characteristics. To investigate the effect of natural interannual vegetation changes on the West African monsoon precipitation, we implement satellite-derived dynamical datasets for vegetation fraction (V...

seasonal precipitation forecasts

The evaluation of a high-resolution simulation at 0.11° (12 km) with the COnsortium for Small-scale MOdelling in CLimate Mode (CCLM) regional climate model, applied over West Africa, is presented. This simulation is nested in a CCLM run at resolution of 0.44°, driven with boundary forcing data from the ERA-Interim reanalysis, and covers the period...

To understand surface energy exchange processes over the semiarid regions in West Africa, numerical simulations of surface energy and water balances were carried out using a one-dimensional multilayer atmosphere-SOil-VEGetation (SOLVEG) model for selected days of the dry and rainy seasons over a savanna grassland ecosystem in Sumbrungu in the Upper...

WADI

BC CORDEX

WASCAL COSMO-CLM

An investigation of the impacts of land surface changes in West Africa, one of the most vulnerable regions of the world with respect to climate changes, require a sound understanding of the land-atmosphere exchange processes and their feedback mechanisms. An investigation of the impacts of land surface changes in West Africa require a sound underst...

Ensemble based discharge forecasts are increasingly used for operational flood warnings in Germany. The objective of this study is an evaluation of the ensemble discharge forecasts of the regional flood forecasting centre in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. The flood forecasting systems uses the COSMO-DE-EPS precipitation ensemble as input for the di...

Das Landesamt für Umwelt in Rheinland-Pfalz (LfU) führt seit 2014 ensemble-basierte Abflussvorhersagen für die landesweite Hochwasserfrühwarnung im operationellen Betrieb durch. Der ensemble-basierte Kern des Vorhersagesystems besteht aus einen flächendifferenzierten hydrologischen Modell, dass die Ensemblevorhersagen des regionalen Wettervorhersag...

The small rainfall recovery observed over the Sahel, concomitant with a regional climate warming, conceals some drought features that exacerbate food security. The new rainfall features include false start and early cessation of rainy seasons, increased frequency of intense daily rainfall, increasing number of hot nights and warm days and a decreas...

Water and energy fluxes at and between the land surface, the subsurface and the atmosphere are inextricably linked over all spatio-temporal scales. Our research focuses on the joint analysis of both water and energy fluxes in a pre-alpine catchment (55km2) in southern Germany, which is part of the Terrestrial Environmental Observatories (TERENO). W...

The analysis of land-atmosphere feedbacks requires detailed representation of land processes in atmosphericmodels.The focus here is on runoff-infiltration partitioning and resolved overland flow. In the standard version of WRF, runoff-infiltration partitioning is described as a purely vertical process. InWRF-Hydro, runoff is enhanced with lateral w...

Seasonal precipitation forecasts are important sources of information for early drought and famine warnings in West Africa. This study presents an assessment of the monthly precipitation forecast of the Climate Forecast System Version 2 (CFSv2) for three agro-ecological zones (Sudan-Sahel, Sudan and Guinean Zone) of the Volta basin. The CFSv2 perfo...

Providing valuable forecasts of the seasonal precipitation amount for the upcoming rainy season is one of the big challenges for the national weather services in West Africa. Every year a harmonized forecast of the seasonal precipitation amount for the West African region is issued by the national weather services within the PRESAO framework. The P...

A variety of factors lead to food insecurity and poverty in West Africa. One of the most important aspects is the difficulty of coping with climate change and variability. In addition, West Africa experiences high population growth rates resulting in considerable pressures on natural resources. The increasing need for food, water, and fuel wood lea...

The credibility of regional climate simulations over West Africa stands and falls with the ability to reproduce the West African Monsoon (WAM) whose precipitation plays a pivotal role for people's livelihood. In this study, we simulate the WAM for the wet year 1999 with a 27-member multi-physics ensemble of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF...

The terrestrial land surface in West Africa is made up of several types of savanna ecosystems differing in land use changes which modulate gas exchanges between their vegetation and the overlying atmosphere. This study compares diurnal and seasonal estimates of CO2 fluxes from three contrasting ecosystems, a grassland, a mixture of fallow and cropl...

Many disciplines in climate studies need meteorological information at locations where measurements are often not available. To overcome this basic problem, a common way is to use spatial interpolation techniques for transferring the information from measurement sites to a location of interest. Since the performance of an interpolation technique st...

Over the last few decades the land surface has been heavily changed in West Africa due to various anthropogenic measures. The impacts of these land surface changes in conjunction with climate change on hydro-meteorological fluxes are uncertain hindering the development of valuable adaptation measures for a sustainable management of natural resource...

The development and application of statistical techniques with a special focus on a recalibration of meteorological or hydrological forecasts for an elimination of systematic differences (bias) between forecasts and observations has received a great deal of attention in recent years. The objective of this study is to propose several statistical tec...

Monthly and seasonal meteorological forecasts are routinely produced by several international weather services using global coupled ocean-atmosphere general circulation models. This kind of information can be used as source of information in operational hydrological monitoring and forecasting systems to improve early drought warnings. In March 2011...

West Africa is characterized by strong land surface changes due to various anthropogenic activities which influence the spatiotemporal patterns of hydro-meteorological fluxes and which might alter the availability of water resources. To investigate these questions, we use a novel two-way coupled atmospheric-hydrological model that allows for a cons...

Land cover is related to a number of biogeophysical land surface properties and therefore has an influence on surface fluxes of water and energy. In many climate impact studies, land cover maps are used to estimate land surface properties that are needed to describe relevant land surface processes. Currently, several global or continental land cove...

Long-lasting large-area heavy precipitation causes in many regions of the world severe inundations that threatens the life of people. To reduce the impacts of such events, flood forecasting systems are developed to alert the population if local protection measures could be exceeded. The goodness of a flood forecast strongly depends on the quality o...

Der überwachende Ingenieur gewährleistet durch seine Tätigkeit die öffentliche Sicherheit von Wasserbauten. Neben visuellen Befunden stehen ihm heute durch die technische Entwicklung viele Möglichkeiten der Datenbeschaffung und -übermittlung bis zu ihrer Auswertung zur Verfügung. Dabei stellt sich die Frage, ob die seit einigen Jahren automatisch e...

Hydrological extremes like floods or droughts are usually caused by unusual atmospheric states. The identification of those states can be performed by calculating the closeness or the similarity between two atmospheric states to identify a suitable set of analogues. However, unusual atmospheric states are rare events. In this case, it can be possib...

Temporal and spatial variability in the rainfall field is regarded as a substantial source of uncertainty in flood prediction with spatially distributed rainfall-runoff models. But often – due to a lack of data – the influence of rainfall uncertainty on the accuracy of flood predic-tion is not properly addressed. In our case, we can base our uncert...

It is well known that weather patterns tend to recur from time to time. This property of the atmosphere is used by analogue forecasting techniques. They have a long history in weather forecasting and there are many applications predicting hydrological variables at the local scale for different lead times. The basic idea of the technique is to ident...

Der überwachende Ingenieur gewährleistet durch seine Tätigkeit die öffentliche Sicherheit von Wasserbauten. Neben visuellen Befunden stehen ihm heute durch die technische Entwicklung viele Möglichkeiten der Datenbeschaffung und -übermittlung bis zu ihrer Auswertung zur Verfügung. Dabei stellt sich die Frage, ob die seit einigen Jahren automatisch e...

Die Regionalisierung hydrologischer Größen spielt eine zentrale Rolle in der Hydrologie. Allerdings führen Interpolationsverfahren wie Kriging zu einer Glättung der Regionalsierungsgröße. Damit zuverlässige Aussagen in der Hydrologie getroffen werden, ist es aber oftmals notwendig, dass die Variabilität der Größen erhalten bleibt. Stochastische Sim...

Regionalization of hydrological variables plays a central role in hydrology. Interpolation techniques like kriging lead to a smoothed regionalized variable. To provide reliable predictions in hydrology, the variability of the variable should be maintained. Stochastic simulation methods are used for this purpose. This study presents a technique used...

The objective of the project HORIX is the development of an efficient management tool for flood forecasts in meso-scale watersheds. Thereby the flood warning should be faster and more reliable than the classical methods. The basis of the investigation is the analysis of important flood relevant processes: forecast of rainfall events – rainfall-runo...