Abstract
Abstract The rainfall anomaly index (RAI) has been widely used to study variations over time in Sahelian rainfall. Its interpretation is often complicated by excessive missing data and changes in station network, both of which prevent a precise quantification of the significance of any given RAI estimate. Also, unless the time series are filtered, high interannual variability often obscures important rainfall fluctuations. Here we apply a simple method for calculating approximate confidence limits of areal rainfall estimates to annual data from two constant network configurations in Sudan and West Africa. These cover, respectively, the periods 1920–88 (13 stations) and 1922–85 (12 stations) and contain only 3 and 5 missing annual totals out of 897 and 768. The resulting annual RAI estimates, and 95% confidence limits, were subjected to a 9-point binomial filter, and a 30-point retrospective uniform filter (i.e., an annually updated WMO reference period), also called a running mean. By combining the RAI an...
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