Abstract
Climate models are generally used to evaluate the climate change impacts. However, they have important biases at the regional or local scales. This study evaluates the future temperature projections in Lake of Guiers/Senegal. For this, the daily maximum and minimum temperature from the ensemble mean of five (5) Coordinated Regional climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) regional climate models (RCMs) under the greenhouse gas scenarios RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 and three (3) bias correction methods (Linear scaling, variance scaling and quantile mapping methods) were used. The performance of raw ensemble mean of the models was first evaluated against the WFDEI data. The results show that this latter exhibits some limitations to reproduce the minimum and the maximum temperature at the Lake scale. In order to make temperature data more accurate, the three bias correction methods were used. Results show that bias correction methods improve well the simulated minimum and maximum temperature. The future temperature projections show an increase of temperature which are faster in bias-corrected data. From the results it is indicated that it is necessary to implement appropriate adaptation measures to address these climate changes. Key words: Climate change, regional climate models, coordinated regional climate downscaling experiment (CORDEX), bias correction methods, Lake of Guiers.
Highlights
Most of the studies conducted on the West African climate show an increase in temperatures in the Sahel region (IPCC, 2013; Ly et al, 2013; Giorgi et al, 2014)
The main objective of this study is to evaluate the performance of the Coordinated Regional climate Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) models and the three (3) bias correction methods commonly used (Linear Scaling, Variance Scaling and Distribution Mapping) to simulate present and future temperature in the Lake of Guiers
The ensemble mean of the model was considered because numerous studies (Kim et al, 2014; Gbobaniyi et al, 2014) pointed that it better reproduces the spatial distribution of the surface temperature
Summary
Most of the studies conducted on the West African climate show an increase in temperatures in the Sahel region (IPCC, 2013; Ly et al, 2013; Giorgi et al, 2014) These temperature increases can impact the hydrological cycle and agriculture yields (Salack et al, 2011; Gelata and Gobosho, 2018; Sarr and Camara, 2018). They can lead to problems in the supply of fresh water to populations through the evaporation phenomena, especially in Sahelian countries which are characterized by a short rainy season (3 to 4 months) and with variability in rainfall distribution (Tall et al, 2016; Luo et al, 2018).
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